


Ashes to Ashes

by Krivoklatsko



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, F/M, Volume 3 (RWBY)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 02:49:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 32
Words: 66,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5400068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krivoklatsko/pseuds/Krivoklatsko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When team RWBY discovers recordings from Mountain Glenn, they are hurled into a conflict years in the making. Alternate V3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Atlas

It was common but sad when Grimm seized a lone person in the snow blinds. It was rarer and more tragic when people turned on each other.

The blizzard that cast its blanket over Atlas left behind a crimson stain. And for a family in a castle, alone on their hill, the cold became that much less bearable.

The report of the death was addressed to Castle Schnee, penned by a friendly hand, and handed by security to the master of the house.

Mr. Jacque Schnee had restricted outside communication for the sake of the holidays. He didn’t care to open another card. 

But he’d also grown tired of his daughter’s excuses. Weiss was nine and already talking as much as her older sister. The inanity- the disrespect, had made him tune out her whining. He thought the frustration was unbearable. Then he opened the letter.

His monocle fell and jangled on its chain, and the letter fell from a shaking hand.

Weiss knew, from experience, to stop talking. Jacque gripped her by the shoulder and, with a rough push, made her about-face. Another nudge between her shoulders put her in front of a full-length mirror. 

Weiss didn’t know what she’d done to provoke his rage. She knew he didn’t like whining. She knew he didn’t like when she evaded practice. She had never seen his face so contorted in rage before over those topics, though.

Weiss was diminutive beside him. Her older sister, Winter, had developed muscle by the age of eight. Weiss, six, was still a skeleton with pudge. She’d inherited the family’s striking albino hair, but none of their other, more intimidating, features. 

She folded a lip under her teeth, and one hand into another. She found her father's eyes in the mirror.  
"I'm sorry," she whimpered.

He shouted. “Look at yourself! This is your birthright! Like a Faunus, you are born into a position, and you cannot escape it! You are what you are, and if you fail to be that, you will die!”

“Practicing is boring,” Weiss said.  
This did not improve her situation. Her father swallowed his next outburst. When the lump finally went down his throat, he growled, "I suppose Schwarz was bored in his studies as well! He’s just been murdered in the street by a handful of Faunus thugs! Dammit! DAMNIT!"

His hand accompanied the outburst, crushing a vase against the wall. The pain of glass shards in his hand was temporary. It faded as soon as his aura pushed them out and closed the wound. But his brother would be gone forever. By an act of discipline, his composure returned, and he was reminded of what he could do. He squared his shoulders and placed a hand on his daughter.

"Your studies are a matter of life and death. If that bores you, I can disown you and give you a safe, comfortable job in the CCT."

She was too young to fully comprehend the consequences. Her eyes lit up, tempered by a vague and untrained caution.

"The Cross-Continental Transmitter?"  
She looked hopefully over her shoulder to him, like a sloth finding a fruit on the branch above.

He said, "Yes. Now look in the mirror."  
Weiss squared her shoulders, and she channeled her excitement into studious attentiveness.

He said, "Repeat after me: 'Welcome to the CCT. How may I direct you?'"  
Weiss did not obey. She thought, tried to understand, and asked, "Why would the overseer practice saying that?"  
"You're practicing to be the receptionist," Mr. Schnee explained, "And if you won't practice with your weapon, then I expect you to excel at your new role. Now, practice. I will evaluate you in ten minutes."

He turned on his heel and left her there. He heard her recital beginning, and tuned out the sound of her voice. He was oblivious when she stopped and snuck after him. 

Mr. Schnee found his wife in the parlor, her hands traversing a vase to inspect a wilted flower. Her eyes followed the snowflakes buffeting the windows. The Schnee Estate was blanketed in that soft silence.

"There's someone coming up the road," she noted.  
Mr. Schnee looked past her, through the window, to the far hill. Traveling lights announced an automobile no more than ten minutes out from the driveway.

"Schwarz is dead," he murmured. "No doubt someone's coming to console us."  
Nival saw his reflection in the window, his pain, and she turned to support him. She comforted his cheek with a delicate hand.  
"I heard. I can prepare a bouquet for Violet."  
“She’s gone, too.”  
She hesitated. It was foolish of her to forget. Tragedies come in threes.  
Jacques’ eyes had steeled on another topic. "Faunus," he muttered.  
"Is it another... Large attack? Should we-"  
"The Shadow Pact. All of them. So they can’t be here." He wrapped his arms around her.  
"It's nothing that should get me so worked up this time," he admitted.  
"You can mourn the loss of family without excuse," she murmured.  
Her eyes shot up to his from the hug. "But you do owe Weiss an apology. You lost your temper with her. She thinks she's done something wrong."  
She waited for Jacque to nod in agreement, then proceeded to praise. "I see the bunk beds have been erected. Have you told her yet?"  
"No. It should be a surprise. Weiss passed the entrance exams for combat school. Barely, but she passed. And Apple is completing her thesis at the Academy in Mountain Glenn. So they've earned it."  
The distraction was welcome. His head shook, and he released his wife to look her in the eye.  
"Of all the things. Bunk beds?"  
"Well… Apple is only fourteen, and Weiss is nine, and… They like each other. They want to have bunks together."  
"But how could they decide on a thing like that before they've even met?"  
He let confusion draw him away from the pain. His wife smiled.  
"Honey, Weiss has been alone since Winter left for Leadership Academy. When Weiss learned her cousin would be coming here, she looked like the whole world had been gifted to her. She said she hoped it was forever."  
"Well… It is now."  
"And don't you breathe a word about their deaths when Apple gets here. She’ll have been told enough already."  
"I know. It seems family has to be guarded more jealously than gold in these times. Still... To have the simple worries of a child. Bunk beds," he scoffed.  
"We live in a castle," his wife reminded him. "It can be lonely."  
The doorbell sounded.  
"And guests," she continued, "even mourners, are a welcome treat."  
She pulled him to the door, where they greeted two officers.  
Nival recognized, "James?"  
She turned her confusion to her husband.  
Mr. Schnee looked at his friend, Captain James Ironwood, and was just as surprised.  
"James, I thought you were engaged at the State Department- at the Capitol, I mean. To what do we owe the pleasure?”  
Ironwood and his secondary stepped into the foyer. They wore full dress, and the secondary carried an ornate box in both hands. 

Ironwood said, "Good evening, Mr. Schnee, and Misses."  
The Schnees looked at the box, then back to Ironwood. Mr. Schnee nodded.  
"I'm sorry to steal your thunder, Captain, but I've already heard about Schwarz. You are welcome to stay. I would greatly appreciate the company."  
There was silence while Captain Ironwood thought. His expression did not change, and he was clearly navigating the tact of an unforeseen situation.  
"Would it be alright if we sat down?" he suggested.  
They returned to the parlor and demanded privacy from the servants. Weiss, the whole while, had evaded detection. Jacque could tell the old injuries were still bothering the Captain. He never relaxed his posture, and always sat favoring his haunches to his tailbone. 

Ironwood’s right pant leg rested thinner than the left, and his right shoulder didn’t heave with his breaths. A patch of skin had never fully regrown on his right brow, where his dura-steel skull was visible like a badge. Otherwise, the uniform hid his cybernetic half very well.

It was when they seated that Mr. Schnee's mind caught up. His eyes found the lapel on Ironwood, and he realized aloud, "Goodness. Are you a Major now?"  
Ironwood nodded. "Yes, Sir. As of yesterday."  
"Well, at least we have some good news to-"  
"-Sir."  
Jacque's mouth snapped shut, and he understood, finally, what was happening.

"The Secretary of the Ambassadorial Administration has asked me to express deep regret that your niece, Apple Schnee, was killed in action in Mountain Glenn this morning during an attack by creatures of Grimm."

Mr. Schnee covered his mouth. He was able to break eye contact with Major Ironwood and look at the box on the table. He swallowed, but never spoke. 

Mrs. Schnee cried out as if struck a mortal blow. 

They embraced, and the both of them were holding on with the grip of desperation. Weiss, forgetting herself, stepped into the room. Her father was quick to bury his emotions in anger. He rounded on Ironwood, already resuming his outrage.

"Those Grimmdamned Vale Huntsmen aren't up to spec! She was working in the core of the city! She was- Am I right?! Ironwood, where was she?!"

Ironwood had given himself an hour to gather everything that was known. He was back into familiar territory, and understood what to do next.

"Mr. Schnee, the Kingdom of Vale signaled distress over the CCT network at oh-four-hundred this morning. Due to the severity of the threat, Mountain Glenn began a voluntary evacuation. Atlas immediately began to evacuate Ambassadorial staff. While most personnel were at the embassy, your niece was not. You may remember that the Mountain Glenn expansion was centered on a subnode of the CCT network. The Small Tower. The Embassy’s Special Retinue Service found her there, and returned her to the Embassy. I have spoken personally with Captain Gray, the military commander at the embassy. He was sitting next to your niece on the last bullhead to leave. He says your niece leaped from the craft during takeoff and could not be safely recovered.”

"She..."  
Too many questions. He wrapped his arms around his wife and buried her tears in his chest.  
"But... She… She fell from the craft? She’s a Huntress, James! She has an aura! Do not tell me she died from a fall! I refuse to believe it!"  
Mr. Schnee, his wife, and Weiss, saw a very strange look on Ironwood. He was trying to convey sympathy. He was hiding fear.

"Have you checked the news today, Sir?"  
"No. It's the Vytal festival. I... We like to keep this time for family."  
Ironwood licked his lips and swallowed. "Sir, Mountain Glenn’s defenses were overwhelmed at ten this morning. Vale CCT has been non-responsive since then. At 1530, the Evacuated Embassy staff arrived in the Capitol and I was notified. And now we're here."

Ironwood leaned back, realizing suddenly that Weiss was almost in his lap. She had approached the table, staring intently at the ornate box.  
She pointed. "What's that?”  
Ironwood placed it in his lap, and presented it to her.  
"Captain Gray attempted to stop your cousin when she fled the craft. She was wearing a necklace."  
He revealed it, a petite crystal chain bearing an apple charm.

Mr. Schnee leaned forward into Ironwood's space. "James, you said the soldiers had to leave. Why? Why aren't they looking for her?"

Ironwood had lowered his gaze to Weiss. It took him a great effort to raise his eyes to Mr. Schnee. The Major could no longer hide it. His pupils were gathered as tiny dots. Every hair on his body stood on end.  
"We received our first reconnaissance report at 1300 today, when a Vacuo scout team returned. There are more Grimm in Mountain Glenn than there are humans in the whole of Remnant. Their motions are coordinated. As of now, it appears that the Grimm have organized and mobilized."  
He swallowed again, waiting for Schnee to understand.  
Nival whimpered, "James, are you saying...? Are you saying that Mountain Glenn is overrun?"  
Ironwood set the box on the table and straightened his uniform. "Until we hear otherwise, the military is assuming the worst. Vale has fallen."  
And with it, a whole quarter of the globe.


	2. Roses

Qrow Branwen unwrapped a cigarette carton and lit his first. The sun dipped and settled off Beacon Academy’s cliffs. He reckoned by the star that he’d arrived two hours early. After it set, he reckoned by the cigarettes. 

He turned South and spied the jagged skyline haunting the horizon: Mountain Glenn. It had been a decade, almost to the day. The buildings stood empty, the blood dried. But the screams still echoed in empty streets. Several friends had left skeletons there.

He put the Glenn behind him, and faced North. Below Beacon’s plateau, The Emerald City of Vale sparkled with nightlife. The decadent city had survived. 

He’d been living in the wild too long. In his father’s day, huntsmen had worn loin cloths and Grimm bone charms. Qrow had lead a fashion trend with blue jeans and a dress shirt.

Now huntsmen- mostly women- dressed like tropical birds. He couldn’t walk down a civilized street without drawing stares. He hoped his nieces were still clothing themselves like humans. 

He glanced to the top of The Tower, and wondered what Beacon Academy’s Headmaster thought of the times. The Beacon was an ancient structure, Remnant’s first challenge to the heavens- Now its tallest, if you included the height of the plateau. The architect had chosen a high gothic bell-tower aesthetic. Because Headmaster Ozpin refused to live in anything less eccentric.

Qrow shook his head, then noted the time and flicked his cigarette away. 

Professor Bartholomew Oobleck arrived exactly on time. “Qrow!”  
The professor’s hair had turned a nasty green in some long gone alchemy mistake. Qrow tried not to look at it. The man had many other qualities that drew attention. It was true of all huntsmen. Oobleck had a similar fashion problem, for example. Slacks and a button down shirt, safari helm, loafers.

Oobleck talked too fast and too smart. “Qrow! And punctual. Serendipitous for me. Though you look dour. Quench your fatigue?” He offered a mug that probably had coffee.  
Qrow grumbled, “I’ve got a headache. And I’d like to get this over with.” He nodded to the dorms.  
Oobleck offered the mug again. “Hair of the dog, then,” he suggested.  
Qrow peeked in the mug. Liquor. He’d been trying to cut back, for the nieces’ sake.  
Oobleck noted his sour expression, and countered, “Trust me, old friend. Now is no time to experiment with emotional states.”  
Qrow swigged.

Oobleck turned to the complex and patted his satchel. He’d brought a holo-screen and data slate. He presented a keycard to the door, and they were accepted into Beacon Huntsman Academy.

The hallway bore Vale’s evergreen colors. Though some doors had foreign banners bracketing them. The Vytal Festival was beginning, and Vale was hosting the tournament, and foreign students.

Qrow stopped at an intersection.   
Oobleck pointed to a door.   
“Team RWBY” tickered across the electronic lock.  
But Qrow’s senses flared, and he glanced down the hall to see team JNPR. The rumor had spread of a dour professor and a stranger entering the halls.   
These four students had poked their heads into the hallway. Qrow stared them down. Oobleck cast a glance and said, “Mr. Arc. Manage your team, please.”  
Jaune, Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren’s heads vanished, and they shut their door.  
Qrow pulled his flask from his jacket, then remembered where he was and returned it without drinking. He looked at team RWBY’s door. He wondered if he could just leave and let this moment never happen. 

Oobleck recognized that thought. He offered, "They will hear it from you, or they will hear it from the media hounds."  
Qrow didn't answer. He scratched at his chin stubble. He'd been about their age when reality slapped his childhood aside. He had survived. He had coped, somewhat. So would they.   
He knocked.

Inside, there was a mirthful shrieking, and the thudding of pillows. Qrow knocked again. 

The door opened to reveal sixteen-year-old Weiss Schnee, snapping, "What?"  
She wore her older sister's sneer. Behind her, a war of feathers waged across a tangled mess of suspended beds and scattered blanket forts. Qrow pushed the door open and passed Weiss without an introduction.  
"Hey!" she yelled.  
"Hey," he mumbled back.  
“Hey,” Blake Belladonna complained from atop a bunk bed. A pillow had interrupted her reading. She threw it down. Qrow caught it.  
"Heyyyyyyyy!" Ruby realized.   
Yang pillowed her face in the moment of weakness. "-is for horses," she finished, adding, "Hey Uncle Qrow. And... Doctor Oobleck?"

The girls had been smiling. But their smiles faded, seeing that Qrow did not join them. They looked to Oobleck for an explanation.   
The door closed.  
"We should find seats," Oobleck suggested.

They circled around Oobleck’s holo-screen. Qrow sat reversed in a chair. 

Oobleck paced behind him, narrating. "You remember, girls, our student mission to the abandoned city of Mountain Glenn. We stumbled upon a White Fang operation which imperiled the very lives of Vale’s citizens. So we boarded a train controlled by the White Fang, and we foiled their plot to breach Vale’s wall and unleash a swarm of Grimm."  
Qrow had not heard about this. He turned a concerned look to his nieces.   
Ruby smiled and gave two thumbs up.   
Yang shrugged, “All in a day’s work.”

Weiss interrupted, "We Almost thwarted them."  
Yang retorted, "We saved a lot of lives."  
“A lot of people... Got hurt," Blake mumbled.  
Qrow’s gaze lingered on her, on the extra set of feline ears atop her head. He’d heard stories about Blake Belladonna. Unkind, she’s-literally-a-terrorist stories.  
"The point is," Qrow grunted. He gestured to Oobleck, "The Professor-"  
"-Doctor," everyone corrected him.  
Qrow licked his lips. He nodded onwards, "Doc found something while you were fighting the White Fang."  
The alcohol finally hit. Qrow slowed to a comfortable drawl. He nodded to Oobleck, and caught him in his own vice. Doctor Oobleck was part-way through a swig of coffee. He gulped it down and spoke as fast as he could articulate. "Yes. Girls, the fall of Mountain Glenn may have been a little before your time, but you should know that it has never left my generation’s thoughts, from the moment it happened. This was not the first time a city was annihilated by Grimm. But it was technically a suburb of Vale, and we had hoped that the Great Cities were secure. And we were wrong. Beyond that, most of the families affected are still alive. And so what I have found is very relevant to the world right now.”

Blake Belladonna leaned forward, her typical sullen look turning to annoyance.   
Her feline ears perked up. “Doctor… What is it?”  
“A cellular phone.”  
Yang asked, “A what?”  
“It’s before your time,” Oobleck explained, “But you can think of it as a primitive Scroll. Someone made a very thorough recording of the defense at Mountain Glenn on their Scroll.”

Ruby Rose had figured out that they were going to watch a video. She was the only girl too young- too naïve- to wonder why.

Oobleck had never delivered a death notice. He knew, very suddenly, that he couldn’t bear this with any serenity.  
"I thought that you may want to see it when you can prepare yourself, when you can have family at hand. Here. Qrow, would you? I should step outside."  
Qrow accepted the remote control, but would not meet anyone's eyes. When Oobleck reached the door, he flicked the lights off. Qrow thanked him. But in the silence after the door clicked shut, Qrow did not speak. Night had fallen in Vale, and the only lights in the room were their auras glowing in their eyes, and the UI of the holo-screen in their midst. Those eyes all weighed on Qrow's weary features.  
In the darkness, Ruby whispered, “It's a video from Mountain Glenn?”  
Qrow didn't answer.  
Blake asked, “Why show it to us?”  
Yang checked everyone's faces and added, “Does it... Does it have to do with the White Fang?”  
Weiss was silent. Then, understanding, she covered her mouth and hoped that the shadows hid her despair. Qrow could bear it no longer. He realized that he had to face the moment, and could never be ready for it. He extended his hand and pressed play.

The camera was clearly a mobile device, from the age before shake correction. The operator was short and clumsy. Her fingers slid over the camera lens and the microphone. When she finally seemed to have it working, the camera lifted, and the scene of Mountain Glenn was fully realized. Her camera faced two soldiers, a Vale Infantry Captain and a Sergeant. Behind them were the great glass windows of the Museum. And beyond those, the undercity burned and writhed like a black ooze smothering a fire.

The Captain asked, "Are we recording?"  
The camera nodded. “Yes.” A young girl’s voice.  
The Captain looked into the camera.  
"Great. Alright, this is Captain Satin Scarlatina, Vale Motorized Reserve. I don't have much to say that I haven't before, Velvet, but you've done us proud in combat school, and you'll do us proud as a huntress. Sergeant? Last words? Excuse me."  
The Captain jogged off screen to join the fight. The Sergeant leaned in to speak, but was interrupted by shattering glass.

The camera panned to a gaping window, where a huntress lay prone. She groaned, stood, and dusted her white cape.   
Her face came into focus. Ruby and Yang gasped, “Mom!”

The Sergeant pointed. "You alright?"  
Summer Rose smiled back. "Yeah. What are you two doing here?"  
She pointed at the camera.   
The Sergeant shrugged. "We're trying to get some broadcasts to Vale. You want to say some words to anybody back home?"  
Summer looked confused.  
"Since we're all gonna die," the Sergeant explained.  
Summer blushed. "Uh... I'm not really good on camera," she mumbled.  
"Look, Miss, this is how people are going to remember you. Just say something for the people you want to hear it."

The camera zoomed to Summer's face. Yang and Ruby leaned in to study every curve and detail of the woman who had raised them. Qrow looked away from his fallen teammate.

"Uh... Alright," Summer smiled, "I mean..."  
Summers' silver eyes met with her daughters' again, crossing a long gap of time. She smiled at them.  
"I, uh... Hi, Tai. Hi Yang. Hi Ruby. I love you guys. See you home soon."  
The anxiety of it had stirred her body into a rocking motion. She twirled her combat skirt and pursed her lips to indicate she was done.

"They'll appreciate that," the Sergeant nodded.  
"Yeah. Well, anyway..." Summer hefted her weapon. "I'm not good at goodbyes," she admitted.  
And she leaped out the window, back into the fight. The video ended there, and the dorm was cast into darkness again. 

Only Blake, with her Faunus eyes, could see in the darkness of that room. They all heard her move to Yang's side, as if saving her from a fall. They heard a sniffle, and Yang's whimpered, "I love you too, Mom."


	3. Elysium

Weiss Schnee gripped her necklace as she passed through the door of Doctor Oobleck's office. He was flipping through notes and maneuvering around the red strings and maps webbed over the space. Each frenetic motion seemed to be racing against death, powered by caffeine and discipline. Oobleck had already explained his driving motives to Ruby- and she’d shared it with the team. His pursuit of knowledge as a historian was to save lives. Weiss didn't pretend to understand him. But she knew he would understand her presence.

She let him work, watching, waiting for him to notice that she’d entered. There was a small screen on his desk quietly playing the last moments of a soldier. He was speaking to the girl behind the phone, to Apple Schnee. And she was consoling him in return.  
"What made you do it, Miss?"  
"Do what?" Apple asked.  
"What made you come back? You could have gotten away."  
Apple hesitated. The soldier’s wounds would end him soon. He did not have the look of a hopeful man.  
She said, "In Atlas, we believe that self-less and noble deeds are rewarded in the afterlife.”  
"Elysium," he croaked.  
"You've heard of it?"  
The soldier nodded, and strained, “Tell me more about it.”  
“It’s got… Grain,” Apple hesitated, “and trees with exotic fruits that grow plump and sweet all year round. There are islands linked by bridges of living wood, and caverns below filled with precious metals that sing like choirs. The waters of the ocean there are perfectly clear, and so healthy that the ancient warriors who drank from it became the first aural fighters.”  
“Will I see my family there?”  
Apple hesitated. She said, “Yes.”  
A tear slid down the soldier’s face. And he sensed, suddenly, that his last moments were upon him. He looked into her camera and said,  
“Corporal Winchester, Vale 3rd Cavalry. I have a son.”  
He choked, blood leaped from his mouth, and his last moments were in convulsions.

Doctor Oobleck placed a finger on his wall map, then referenced the video, and finally secured a red string to the map with a tack. He brought the string's other end to a stack of papers, and flicked through them, his eyes skimming profiles of the deceased.

He stopped. Weiss performed her introductory smile, but Oobleck hadn't seen her. He dropped the string, and used both hands to raise the picture before him.  
"Oh," he said to himself.  
Then he saw Weiss.  
"Oh!"

But she did not answer him. The room's light passed through the picture, and Weiss saw her cousin's face in reverse. Oobleck saw the apple charm on her necklace, cradled in her fingers, and he understood. He set the picture down.

"I guess that saves me having to explain," Weiss mumbled.  
Oobleck realized, in a moment of compassion, that her eyes had fallen to the video. Apple was now recording a man bleeding out and crying as someone rendered him aid. Oobleck gestured the screen off.

Weiss said, "If she... Recorded all of this. She knew people would want to see their family one last time."  
Weiss told herself that she was reasoning to a conclusion. Oobleck recognized that she was hoping.  
"I haven't reviewed all of the video yet, Miss Schnee," he said, his tone level.  
"She wouldn't have forgotten to say something to me."  
"I will tell you what I find," Oobleck promised.  
"I want to see her," Weiss corrected, "like how Ruby and Yang saw Summer."  
But she met a glare sturdier than her assertion, and tempered by far more experience.  
He said, "It may not be like that, Miss Schnee."


	4. Blake

Blake Belladonna had a favor to return. In her moment of crisis, when she had burned the candle at both ends, Yang had returned her to sanity. Yang had been there to calm her troubles.

Now Yang needed help. Oobleck’s video had opened old wounds. She couldn’t imagine seeing her own mother’s face again. But her friend just had, so she needed to rise to that challenge.

The problem was finding Yang. She wasn't at the dorm, the Vytal Festival, or with team JNPR, or punching anything expensive. It was only by a stroke of luck that she found her. Wind gusted the courtyard, and Blake followed the smell of her skin, the soft musk of her sweat, her favorite soap. Yang was hiding in the chapel on the cliffs. Students were aware of the building, but the Great War started by the gods had finished without them. Buildings like this stood in disrepair and disregard.

Blake stopped in the entryway. Stained glass windows flanked the chapel- Women in red and gold armor, cast aglow by daylight. Their amber god rays cut the darkness. Each woman, in each image, displayed a scar along her palm. Blake wandered forward, taking in the craftsmanship and admiring the echo of her low heels clicking on stone.

She saw her mother. She stopped. She blinked. One of the portraits had feline ears and feline eyes. Poised mid leap, heels kicked up and spear ready, she looked like the joyous faunus warrior. She had full cheeks and light sparkling behind her eyes. She was livelier than Blake remembered Khali- and taller. And her mother had never fought with a spear.

Blake swallowed and looked away. She was grasping at resemblances. Her feline eyes found Yang sitting on the pulpit, facing the portrait at the chapel’s head: Athena Polis.  
Blake whispered, “I don't think you're supposed to sit up there.”  
Yang hopped down and walked to a pew, where Blake joined her.   
They both sat, and Blake leaned in to listen. But Yang didn't talk.

Blake kept her voice low. “I didn't think I'd find you here.”  
“I wanted to be alone,” Yang hummed back.  
“Oh.”   
Blake hefted the book from her lap to her arm, and stood to leave.  
“But you can stay,” Yang corrected.  
“Thanks,” Blake smiled.  
She sat again, and placed the book between them.   
Yang nodded to it. “What’s it about?”  
Blake placed a hand on the cover. “Third Crusade. It’s a book of stories. I was going to read Lone Wolf. It’s about a Faunus warrior who loses his way home during an eclipse. He's lost in the woods. Grimm beset him on all sides. But he remembers the things that matter to him about home, and he follows those feelings to a new place where he can build a new home. When I lost my parents, I used to read it to comfort myself.”  
Her hand rested on the cover, but her fingers reached through it, to something the book could never give her.

Yang placed a hand on Blake's. She offered it with a mellow smile. “What happened to them?”

Blake returned that mellow smile. Her voice quavered. “My parents moved us to Mantle, to work at one of the Schnee company mines. The wages were better. Mom said we were going to get our own house in Atlas. Not an apartment. Then the council said Faunus can't own property inside the city. They made rules about Faunus owning businesses, or riding public transit. That was when the White Fang started militarizing. They said a brave young bull had taken up arms in the woods. There were raids against the refinery. No one ever got hurt, but the Dust wasn’t flowing. So Atlas decided… Faunus shouldn’t be allowed to carry weapons.”  
“WHAT?!” Yang's shout echoed in the chapel.   
Blake nodded. “Those were the times. So the protests started. The workers went on strike, and they didn't go back until they had enough rights to get by.”  
“Did it work? Sorry.” Yang held her hands up. “Didn't mean to interrupt.”  
“No, it's fine. I don't know all the details. I was really young. Pretty soon, we weren’t allowed to protest. And things got… Harder for everyone. I remember they took my parents away. But the rest of the miners hid me.”  
Blake’s hand trembled against Yang’s. She realized, suddenly, that she was not ready to talk about this. She skipped ahead in the story. “Everyone went back to work one day. They were a lot happier. Mom told me everything was going to get better, just like she'd said before. Then they went down into the mines, and never came out. There was a big accident.” Blake ended the story there. She was weary. 

Yang looked angry. “Was it... Was it an accident, accident?”  
“I've heard a lot of theories,” Blake admitted. “But no one really knows, maybe not even the Schnee family.”  
Blake collapsed her posture, her elbows digging into her knees and face into her hands. Yang's mouth moved, but she couldn't find words. She wrapped her arms around Blake, and let the hug say everything. They were quiet for a long while, and Blake wrapped her arm around her friend's.

“I came here to comfort you,” Blake mumbled.  
“I'm okay,” Yang whispered.  
“You sure?”  
“Yeah. We can go back to the room. Will you... Will you read your book to me?”  
Blake blushed. She looked up from her hug. So had Yang.   
Blake gulped. “I've never read out loud before,” she admitted.  
Yang giggled. “I know, Blake. Don’t worry, I can-”  
“But I'll do it,” Blake asserted. She had summoned every ounce of her courage.

It wasn’t until they reached the room that true dread restrained her. She knew Yang’s amusement was growing with her hesitation.   
First, Blake set her books on the bed.   
Then she changed from her uniform to her pajamas.   
Then she moved the book to her dresser while she straightened her bed.  
“It's more comfortable to sit on it this way,” she explained.  
Yang watched, her smile turning to giggles as Blake adjusted the light level.  
“It's kind of cold in here,” she noted, “so I'll just go change the-”  
“Blake.” Yang patted the bed beside her.

Blake nodded. She inched her way to the bed and sat. Yang placed the book in her lap. Blake looked at it, then to Yang. Yang had leaned in close to her, an arm around her shoulder, and a sharp smirk piercing her anxiety. Blake hadn’t touched a soul since her team in the White Fang. As their skin touched, her hair stood on end. She missed affection.

“You did promise,” Yang smiled.

Blake nodded. Her gaze fell to the book. She felt tense and alert, like she was gripping a box full of spiders.  
Yang offered, “I used to have stage fright, too. My dad said it helps if you close your eyes and just pretend no one's watching.”  
“I can't read with my eyes closed.”  
“Oh. Yeah, good point.”  
They laughed together. Blake opened the book. And though she had feared it, the moment of her first words came and passed without pain. She spent the day in comfort with her friend.


	5. Malice

General James Ironwood had an uncomfortable morning bump with Qrow Branwen. They met eyes at the base of Vale’s CCT Tower, at the same elevator.

"You're early, Qrow," General Ironwood pointed. He meant, “On time.”  
Qrow scratched at his unkempt chin and nodded. "Thought we should ride together."

Qrow motioned for Ironwood to enter the elevator first. Ironwood was more comfortable exposing his back. He queued up Ozpin’s office, and the doors slid closed. They were riding to the top. In Ironwood's experience, it was a long time to stand in silence.

Qrow hadn't shaved or showered or changed, but he'd clearly been up early for something. He held a red cup from the Vytal festival.  
Ironwood nodded to it. “What’s your poison?”  
Qrow looked down into his cup and scowled. "Vytal Slurpee.” He took a sip, and didn't seem to particularly enjoy it. “'Tis the season," he added.  
"It doesn't smell alcoholic," Ironwood noted.  
"It isn't," Qrow grunted. A look of offense crossed his face.   
Ironwood corrected that slight with an offer. "Hold out your cup."  
Qrow, curious, did. Ironwood retrieved a flask from his uniform. He poured a generous dose. Their elevator broke through the tower's lower ring, and their exterior position gave them a view of all Vale. They could see Mountain Glenn, shrouded by low clouds in the distance. The rising sun became fragmented vectors as it passed through Atlas’ visiting air fleet. 

Qrow sniffed his drink. "Jimmy,” he realized, “This is the reserve Whiskey the Schnees keep to themselves.”  
Ironwood nodded. "It is. Incidentally, Vytal Berries are a complimentary flavor. Enjoy."  
“Thanks.” Qrow toasted his cup, then tilted it to his lips. But Ironwood watched his throat. Qrow only pretended to drink. He came down from the faux-chug with a satisfied sigh. Ironwood glared.   
Qrow said, "You know what always sets me on edge about you, Jimmy?"  
"No. I've been trying to find out," Ironwood admitted.  
"You're likable. It's unnerving."  
"Not too likable," Ironwood mumbled.  
Qrow understood he'd been made, and spit the drink back into his cup.  
"Still, it's generous. Usually, the poison's more expensive than the booze." Qrow chuckled. “Seriously, you wouldn't believe the swill people have tried to drug me with.”  
He patted Ironwood on the back, whose annoyance only grew with the accusation. They passed the cloud layer before Qrow spoke again. The Carrier Eidolon hovered above the fleet. The sky was like an oil painting, and the fleet was like an industrial park. 

Qrow’s brow tightened. He was watching the silhouettes marching on Eidolon’s deck.  
In a low voice, he asked, "What's with the robots, Jimmy?"  
"Your clothing has hyper-fine stitching, Qrow. It's too late to reject robotics."  
“I meant the tin men.”  
Ironwood sighed. He hated Qrow’s nicknames. But as an answer, he shrugged his right shoulder and shifted his weight to adjust his leg. He was drawing Qrow’s attention to the prosthetics that replaced the whole right-half of his body. “I’m a tin man, Qrow.”  
"You know what I mean," Qrow grunted.  
Ironwood frowned and looked out at the horizon, where gunships and strike craft were swarming near the fleet. Eidolon was changing the airguard.  
“You don’t like the Elysium Knights,” Ironwood said.  
“I don’t like any of your automatons,” Qrow corrected.  
Ironwood wondered how much Qrow knew. He’d overheard an enlisted man joking that Penny Polendina was the worst-kept secret in Atlas. That didn’t mean anyone else was in the know. But it was worrisome.   
He nodded. “It seems you’re worried… That anything not under your control might turn against you.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Like fire.”  
“Precisely,” Qrow slurred.  
“Like a child.”  
Qrow didn’t compliment that one.   
Ironwood drove the point. “The ethics involved in handing a gun to a robot are no different from raising a child and handing him a gun at eighteen.”  
Qrow scoffed. “Jimmy, if that was true, you wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of building the robots.”  
Ironwood shook his head. “If anything, we have more control, and more certainty about the robot.”  
“I’ll trust a human, thanks.”  
“Have you ever had to deliver a death notice?” Ironwood asked.  
“Yeah,” Qrow snapped, “First when I told Yang that Raven was missing in action. Then when I told Ruby and Yang that Summer was missing in action. And then again, last night, when I showed them a video of her last words.”  
Ironwood swallowed. “I'm sorry to hear that,” he acknowledged.  
Qrow nodded and motioned him onward, to present his argument.   
Ironwood nodded his thanks. “In Atlas, we believe that warriors who die fighting the Grimm are delivered to Elysium, where they can live their days in peace. The belief is that you have to die in mortal terror, giving your life for humanity, to earn a peaceful life.”  
Qrow mumbled, “Life sucks and then you die. It can't get worse after that.”  
Ironwood let the illusion of control slip. He growled, “Paradise after life is not a lie I want to keep telling. But I believe that these knights can guard the Elysium that we build on Remnant.”

Qrow didn’t contest that. He shook his head. "Well you should have kept them in Atlas. Bringing a fleet to Vale wasn't a good move.”  
Ironwood backed down. He moved back to Qrow's side and looked out the glass.  
"I'm starting to see that," he admitted, "But I hope my intentions are clear."  
Qrow mumbled, "Yeah. The robot army has a lot of charm to it.”  
Ironwood heard, "I've made up my mind."  
Qrow added, "Thanks again for the drink.” But he didn’t drink it.  
“Any time,” Ironwood sighed.  
Ironwood thought Qrow had finished there, that they could ride in silence.  
But Qrow licked his lips, and exposing a softer side. “How’s Amber?”  
Ironwood cleared his throat and shifted his feet. He’d been to the vault beneath the school, and visited her stasis pod.   
He’d spoken to the doctors.   
“She’s… Stable. Whatever that means.”  
“Is she in pain?”  
“No.” It was good to be the bearer of good news.  
“Does Ozpin still want to kill her?”  
It was never good to bear the murkier facts. “No one wants to kill her, Qrow.”  
“Wouldn’t say that,” Branwen quipped.  
Ironwood accepted that with a frown. “None of us do.”  
The elevator stopped and opened. Headmaster Ozpin sat at his desk, analyzing files as they slid across the screen, his mouth hidden behind a brilliant emerald scarf, eyes occluded by the glare on his glasses. At his side, Glynda Goodwitch looked out over the Emerald City of Vale. 

Ozpin looked up. He was smiling. “Ah. You rode together this time.”  
Glynda turned away from the windows and saw Ironwood. When their eyes met, he was reminded of better days, long gone. Glynda preempted any polite greetings by leaning forward and tapping Ozpin’s desk. A hologram sprung to fill the room's center.

Ironwood and Qrow stopped. They were staring at a still-frame image, the first frame of a paused video. Qrow pointed to a time stamp in the bottom corner. "Mountain Glenn?"

Ironwood gestured to the image, of a Goliath striding through Merlot Plaza. “Goliath Fury?”  
“Malice,” Glynda corrected. “Goliath Malice was destroyed in Mountain Glenn. Fury replaced it.”  
She gestured for the video to play. The Goliath's colossal foot crushed a tower. A loud burst of solid fuel ignited nearby, and soldiers cheered as a rocket struck the creature in its side. The explosion dissipated across an aural shield.  
Qrow's jaw fell open. “What?!”  
Ironwood pointed in disbelief, stopping the footage with his gesture. But the picture wasn't lying. He rewound the moment.  
“Tell me that isn't possible, Jimmy,” Qrow murmured.  
“We’d heard rumors,” Ironwood remembered, “But… We didn’t believe them.”

“So it's true,” Ozpin mumbled.  
He had their attention.  
“Tell me this isn't a trend,” Qrow hissed.  
Ozpin said nothing. Glynda stepped forward, and with a nod to General Ironwood, she said, “Doctor Merlot's experimentation on Grimm lead to a new breed. Fortunately, they haven’t been observed spawning since the incident.”   
Qrow interrupted, “That only means they haven’t been observed.”  
Glynda sighed, “Well that’s all we have to go on. Unfortunately, Doctor Merlot blew up his laboratory, and himself, before team RWBY could secure any data.”  
Qrow blinked over the team name, then snapped, “Before What?”   
Ironwood asked, “Is something wrong?”   
Qrow turned to the Headmaster. “Oz? I keep hearing stories about my nieces brawling with gangsters, trading rounds with terrorists, treasure hunting in Mountain Glenn, and battling new breeds of Grimm.”  
Ozpin nodded. “Yes. That sounds like them.”  
Qrow held out his hands. “My nieces are first-years. You think, maybe, I dunno, they should start with some book learning?” Qrow bared his teeth as if smiling. He had all the traits of a wild animal. Protecting his kin was the only virtue Ironwood had observed.

Ozpin unfolded his arms, refolded them, licked his lips, and said. “Qrow…. When team RWBY goes AWOL- that is to say, every week, we offer them the support they need. Your nieces, and their teammates, are very adventurous. I wonder where they got it from.”  
Glynda interrupted, “Back on point, gentlemen. Qrow, you gave us a description of Amber’s attackers. Oobleck has confirmed for us the connection between Doctor Merlot and Mountain Glenn. And if I understand right… James?”  
She struggled to look at him. “You have something for us?”

Ironwood nodded. "That’s right, Glynda. Atlas Intelligence Bureau may have confirmed Ozpin’s suspicions. Mountain Glenn was an intentional attack, orchestrated by a human.”  
Qrow asked, “Human?”  
Ironwood nodded. “Our suspect is human, not faunus. At least seventy years old. If they adopted life-extension medications as soon as possible, they could look forty. The suspect cannot be Doctor Merlot. Most importantly, we believe that the suspect is alive and intends to destroy Vale. Soon. During the Vytal Tournament, in fact. Probably with the same method.”  
He gestured to the screen.  
Glynda confirmed, “By provoking an overwhelming swarm of Grimm.”

Qrow turned away from the news and dragged a hand over his mouth, as if wiping away his disbelief. He turned back when he was ready. “It's not the craziest thing I've heard, Jimbo. So, setting aside how this is possible… How do we fight a swarm of Grimm with auras?”  
Ironwood tilted his head, and turned to answer. “Ideally, we would prevent this by finding our suspect.”  
Qrow nodded and interrupted, “Yeah. Yeah, great. Someone between the ages of forty and two-hundred who doesn’t have a tail.”  
Glynda flared her eyes in annoyance. “Qrow, you gave us a description of Amber’s attacker. A woman in red assaulted Amber and tried to steal the Fall Maiden’s powers. Since a Fall Maiden was present in Mountain Glenn, we can reason that the woman you saw, wearing red, is connected.”  
Ozpin pointed out the logical leap. “Amber’s attacker could be aware of the maidens and uninvolved in Mount-”  
“-No, no, no, Oz.” Qrow held out a hand. “We’re on to something here. Female. Red dress. We’re down to only half the world’s population.”  
Glynda rolled her eyes and turned away.  
Ironwood stepped in. He knew Qrow’s sarcasm binges were unstoppable if they got momentum.  
“One of my specialists has made progress on the case.”  
That got attention from everyone.   
Ironwood held up a hand. “She doesn’t know what we know. Not yet. I only told her to investigate the attack in Mountain Glenn from Ozpin’s angle. And she has results. Some of it, I just told you. But I’d like all of you to hear her insights on the matter. She's arriving with her retinue tomorrow, with the next wave of Paladins. Her name is Winter.”  
Qrow pursed his lips. He swallowed and suddenly had that distracted wild look, like he wanted to run into the woods and kill something. He braced himself against the window by one arm, glaring out over the city like a bird of prey.  
Ironwood asked, “Qrow? Something wrong?”  
“Yeah. Still here. Just thinkin'.”  
Ironwood held out his hands, one flesh, one metal. “Are you thinking about what we’re talking about? You look like you’ve realized something.”  
“Yeah,” Qrow grumbled, distracted. “A woman who can destroy a city and rile up all the forces of evil.”  
“Do you have someone in mind?”  
“My ex.”


	6. The Winter Soldiers

Atlas had three problems selling paladins to Vale. The first was an ocean, the second was a continent of wilderness, and the third was Grimm. The military had answers to all of these. So it was that two Atlessian marines found each other’s side on a long trip to Vale. Their conversation began on the boat.

“You from Atlas proper?”  
“No. I grew up in a Schnee colony.”  
“A dust mine?”  
“Chernobyl.”  
“Oh. I... Hope you didn't lose anyone.”  
“Well I'm not a Faunus, so...”  
“Oh. Right.”  
They shared a nervous laugh, shook hands, and exchanged names.  
“Cobalt.”  
“Steele.”

They'd been raised on the snowy plains of Atlas, honest terrain. The boat docked, and their journey took them through the Forest of Forever Falls, where trees and vines blocked all vision. Overhead was the whir of a gunship. Beside them, the rumble of a tank. And underfoot, the soft tread of crimson leaves. 

The marines had been told that they were guarding a routine caravan. A quick glance at their cargo spoiled that lie. No amount of tarp could cover the prototype mech suits. Paladins were the newest weapon in the fight against Grimm. Now mere men could go steel-to-claw with monsters. Or murder faunus by the thousands.

Steele and Cobalt had heard rumors of a Force Specialist traveling with the caravan. Maybe one hundred existed in total. And Atlas had decided that one was needed here. Their worries only increased.

But that was just a rumor. They were discussing it when a soldier in a black uniform dismounted a truck ahead of them. They fell silent. Atlas’ marines wore white. The Special Retinue Service wore black. And only the Agents of the Retinue wore greatcoats and visor caps.

The Retinue’s presence was always met with silence and fear. The brush around the caravan grew denser, and the canopy thickened, darkening the mood. Steele and Cobalt shared alert glances. They’d have combat badges before they reached Vale.

The Retinue Agent shirked her great coat and tossed it up to a soldier on the truck. The back of her armor vest read “HIKARI.” Her armband depicted a snowflake.

Cobalt nudged Steele and whispered, “Winter’s Soldiers.”  
Steele nodded. “So there really is a Specialist here. That’s the experimental unit, right? They’re merging the Retinue into the military?  
Cobalt’s head was elsewhere. “Steele, we’ve got a Specialist, The Retinue, at least three gunships, like five tanks, and two-hundred marines here. What are we expecting to happen?”  
“I dunno. I saw SDC logos on the Paladins. Maybe our corporate overlords just want to be certain about this shipment. Dude, look at that spec ops shit. Is that an aura scope?”

They watched the Retinue agent, taking stock of her armor plates and thigh hoppers, gathering brand names and exchanging knowledge on equipment.

An hour later, Steele's curiosity beat his fear. He said, “Alright it was nice knowing you, Cobalt. I just gotta ask about that armor mod.”

He jogged forward, and Cobalt hissed, “Wait! Steele! Fuck!”  
Steele tapped the Agent’s shoulder and asked, “Hey. Uh. Don’t you guys have an XO who gets on you about that stuff?”  
He gestured to the Agent’s side, where she had removed a ceramic plate and welded an ammo feeder.

He couldn't read her expression through her combat helmet.  
She pointed ahead of them, to Force Specialist Winter Schnee, side-saddle atop a spectral horse. 

The Specialist wore a white uniform with silver accents that matched her hair. As her head turned, surveying the forest, Steele caught her adamantine gaze. He could feel the presence of her aura, scanning. Leaves and branches gently wafted under the force. She found nothing of interest, and looked ahead.

Steele looked down at his uniform: He was a mess from marching. He looked at Winter: She was immaculate. He looked at The Retinue Agent. His reflection on her faceplate was a scared kid. Steele steeled his face and consciously dropped his voice an octave.  
“So… That’s your XO?”  
Hikari nodded, smirking. “That's my XO.”  
“And she's cool with you modding your armor?”  
Hikari nodded sideways, not finding a short answer.  
“Winter told us a story about the Great War. A ship, SDC Hindenburg, went down with its magazines still full. She didn't like that. She told us that we're not allowed to die until we've spent every last cartridge. Told us she didn't care how we made it happen.”  
“Whoa,” Steele acknowledged.  
Cobalt hustled forward to join them, pointing at the ammo hopper on Hikari’s side.  
“Your cartridges are cut at thirty degrees. Standard burn carts are twenty-five. That's not standard.”  
He turned his point and frown into an open hand and a question.  
Hikari shrugged. “Sure, it's standard. Merlot standard.”  
She held out her rifle, trigger finger pointing to the maker's mark along the receiver. Cobalt gawked.  
“Those haven't been in production for, like...?”  
He gestured to Steele, who finished, “Merlot Industries died at Mountain Glenn.”  
“Their patents didn’t,” Hikari shrugged.

Steele and Cobalt traded glances that said, “Does she mean...?”  
Cobalt stuttered, “D-d- hang on. Do you mean... You've got the hookup? Like, that's not an antique?”  
Hikari sighed and reversed her rifle's sling. On the flip side of the receiver was a manufacture date that made Cobalt and Steele giggle like schoolgirls.

Steele patted his friend’s shoulder. “Alright, alright, we gotta calm down, Cobalt.”  
He lead a breathing exercise, then turned back to Hikari.  
“Okay. How do we become you?”  
“Ask Winter,” Hikari pointed.

Merely looking her way gave them a fear they could not surmount.  
Steele mumbled, “Right now?”  
Hikari shrugged.

Cobalt gulped, but didn’t say anything. Steele asked, “Okay, how did you become you?”  
That got a smile from Hikari.  
She said, “So there was this fortune teller. A lion faunus. She told me I was an old soul. My natural enemies are islands to my south, and my natural ally is Winter. She said my old soul was a subject of the Snow Queen, and that I had an errand to complete for her. So I had to seek her on the North Mountain.”  
Cobalt was wise enough to interrupt and say, “This is bullshit, right?”  
“Well, no. If you want to join the retinue, you’re going to climb Old Blue Balls. So I get to the top of this mountain out on the ice caps, and there’s this field of sticks with strips of cloth on them. On the way down, I bump into an SRS outpost. Recruiter was there. Pure coincidence. They took me in, and about twenty years later I see there’s a new specialist named Winter, and she needs a retinue. Gypsy did me right the first time. I figured, ‘why not?’”  
Cobalt did the math on his fingers. “But, wait… You’re like, our age. You can’t have been a soldier for twenty years. That would make you forty?”  
“I’m eighty. Wonders of modern medicine, boys. The real mystery is Winter’s age.”  
Hikari gestured forward, to Winter and her transparent horse.

Steele could forgive tall tales about age and fortune tellers. The spectral horse bothered him.  
He asked, “Was that horse on the boat?”  
“Nope,” Hikari grunted.  
Cobalt asked, “Does Vale have wild… Transparent… Horses?”  
“It’s her semblance,” Hikari explained.  
“Uh…” Cobalt objected.  
Steele shook his head. “Hold on. I thought semblances were, like, running super fast, or turning invisible.”  
Hikari hummed, “Well, Winter summons the souls of the dead.”  
Cobalt narrowed his eyes.  
Steele was wise enough to say, “That’s bullshit, right?”  
Hikari looked at him. With her eyes covered and her mouth a flat line, he didn’t know what she meant. Eventually, she said, “It’s a transparent horse. Bullshit is what’s for dinner, kid.”  
“Spooky bullshit,” Cobalt agreed.

They walked for another hour in silence. Winter’s posture never relaxed. Occasionally, her head would turn out to the forest. Her sharp cheeks and steely eyes belonged on a tank. She looked too perfect to be human. She lived up to the myths they’d heard about Huntresses, about Specialists.

After that hour of watching, they grew more bored than afraid.  
Steele asked, “What do you think she’s thinking about?”  
“She’s daydreaming for sure,” Cobalt nodded.  
“Don’t say that to her face,” Hikari chuckled.  
Cobalt nudged Steele, who asked for him, “But she is daydreaming. About a guy? Is he cute?”  
Hikari laughed.  
Cobalt kept guessing. “A huntsman? Rugged?”  
Steele, in a romancer's voice, whispered, “He's a lover, not a fighter.”  
“But he's also a fighter,” Cobalt added.  
Hikari kept laughing.

“No, but seriously.” Steele brought the conversation back to reality. He nodded upwards to the Specialist.  
Hikari shrugged, “You actually got it. There's a guy. A rugged Huntsman. But this job... Tell you what. You wanna be me?”

Steele and Cobalt followed her tone, the nostalgic pain that Hikari shared with her commander. They saw, through the utter discipline in Winter's posture, how only her daydreaming offered the luxury of a well-rounded life. They still felt envy for the fruits of the tree of labor. But they weren't ready to feel the labor.

“Maybe?” Steele squinted.  
Cobalt asked, “After you climb the mountain, what do you have to do?”

Hikari sighed, “Classified. But I'll tell you this. When you're working with Winter, you've gotta-”  
Hikari stopped. A cargo truck passed her, the newest of Atlas' Paladins sitting inert on its bed. She was staring at Steele, her mouth an angry line. He checked himself and thought through the last few seconds. Had he pissed her off? Then he realized, she was looking past him, just over his shoulder.

She finished, “Find cover.”


	7. Eudaimonia

High above Vale, where the clouds grazed in a blue sea, a bulk of steel stood guard, sentinel over everything within its horizon. Every citizen, glancing up, was struck by the sun’s reflection on its name- Eidolon, emblazoned across the hull- and knew that it would prove to be a powerful guardian or an awesome tyrant. They did not know which.

Vale News Network sent a reporter to investigate.

Lisa Lavender stepped onto the bridge of the Atlessian Carrier. General Ironwood was standing level with her, at a railing marking the end of the command deck. Around and below him sat a massive bank of Staff officers and direct controllers to the ship’s subsystems. Lisa knew nothing about what she was looking at.

General Ironwood extended a hand. His mouth sharpened into a smirk, seeing her reaction. She reciprocated with a shake and a warm smile.  
“General. Thank you for having me aboard,” she began.

Ironwood nodded, and held up a hand to stop her. “I'm glad to have you, Miss Lavender.”  
Miss, Lisa noted, so he's done his research.  
She'd done her own. Glynda Goodwitch had said “I have nothing to say about James Ironwood,” in a way that said everything.

General Ironwood continued. “There is something I want to be clear about. I understand as well as any leader that fear is a powerful motivator. But it also attracts Grimm. I don't want to turn the news on tomorrow and see my words twisted to scare people.”  
Lisa's smile faltered. She snapped, “Journalism doesn't have an agenda, General.”  
He leveled an accusatory gaze at her. “But agencies do.”  
“Which brings us to the present,” Lisa countered, “because my agency is wondering what yours is doing here. Why has the Atlessian Military crossed the world to visit us?” Through her smile, her eyes had sharpened to a steely point.   
Ironwood nodded his acceptance. “That's a fair question. If my mission here could be summarized in one sentence, it would be, 'to inspire confidence.'”  
“And my mission,” she smiled, “is to tell a story about our cooperation.”  
“I'm glad to hear that,” Ironwood nodded.  
He gestured to a station. “Shall we begin?”  
Lisa followed, while Ironwood explained. “This is our tracking station. Lieutenant Katt?”  
Katt was a cat Faunus with the wrinkles of a father. He stared intently at a screen covered in red dots and whispered instructions to a woman with a headset. At the sound of his name, he turned. “Sir? Ah. The reporter. I’m Lieutenant Ramadi Katt. This is Lieutenant Fola Merlot. Welcome aboard Eidolon.”  
Katt extended a hand, which Lisa shook. Merlot did not turn away from her station. She growled into her headset, “It's a simple question, Patch. Are you overrun with Grimm, or not? … Thank you. Eidolon out.”  
She ended the call and faked a smile to Lisa. “Sorry about that, Miss Lavender. Welcome to Eidolon.”  
Lavender. So everyone knew her name. “Thank you,” Lisa repeated.  
Ironwood stepped in and continued the tour. “Right now, Lieutenants Katt and Merlot are tracking the positions of Grimm around the continent and relaying them to allied forces. The carrier Eidolon has a uniquely powerful sensory array that can provide a more accurate picture of enemy forces from here to Vacuo or Mistral.”  
Lisa wrote the words into her notepad at the speed they were spoken, sparing plenty of attention for the chatter between Katt and Merlot.  
Katt murmured, “Patch is clear? Let's call Fort Castle next.”  
Merlot nodded. Then, into her headset, “Fort Castle, this is Carrier Eidolon, Atlas First Expeditionary.”  
Lisa saw that Ironwood was watching her pen move. She knew she could multi-task better than most, and distracted him with a question.

“There are a lot of dots on that screen. Are there really that many Grimm?”  
Katt interrupted, “The machine isn't tracking Grimm, Miss. It tracks a phenomenon called Diaspora. It's a technical term for how a dust vein reacts to the presence of Grimm. The actual energy content of the Dust will spread out of the area Grimm are in, and go towards parts of the vein with less Grimm. So we take the known position of Dust veins, measure their specific and relative energy at certain points, and then compare them to anomalous weather, RADNAP, and DO-RO. Anywhere that a cross-section of hits occurs, the tracking station displays a red dot. We're using the machine's max sensitivity right now, so Fola and I are calling on allies that can falsify these hits. Sorry, did that make any sense?”

Lisa avoided the word “no,” and nodded, “We have a military analyst at the station.”  
She'd written every word he spoke. She skipped a line and caught the end of Merlot's conversation.  
“It's nothing to worry about, Fort Castle. We're at DefCon Two for a drill. Yes. Thank you. Eidolon out.”  
Merlot nodded to Katt, who removed another red mass from his screen.  
“Next we'll do... Odessa,” he decided.  
Merlot placed her next call. Lisa took a glance at her notes and saw what her mind had missed. She turned to Ironwood.

“Is it unusual to use the maximum sensitivity for the tracking station?”  
Katt opened his mouth to answer.   
General Ironwood was faster. “Just a precaution,” he lied.  
He was good at hiding his tells. But hiding them revealed enough.  
“Nothing I should be worried about?” Lisa poked.  
“I would never advise worrying, Miss,” Ironwood quipped, “It attracts Grimm.”  
He pulled his dimples tight against his face the way a territorial animal would. Lisa's smile turned just as forced.

Merlot's voice broke that contact.  
“Repeat: Odessa Command, this is Eidolon, First Expeditionary. Are you there?”  
There was a long, still silence on the bridge. Everyone was watching Merlot. Then Katt startled in his seat. A receipt printed out one line at a time, loud and jerky. He snatched it and announced, “Return from StratCom!”  
He swallowed, and read aloud. “Our hit matches Swarm Fury, but the mass is larger- out of normal variance.”  
Merlot met his eyes, but did not accept the realization that was creeping upon them. She tapped buttons and turned nobs and spoke again.  
“This is the Atlessian military, hailing any and all huntsmen in the Odessa greater area.”

Lisa's hand found the end of her notepad, and she flipped the page. She glanced to General Ironwood, and saw that they had been joined by another Officer. She recognized his hat. This was the Fleet Commander. His name tag said “Gray.”  
He said, “Katt, can you display Contact Null-Null-Three-Two's movement over the last three days?”  
Commander Gray did not have the glow of snow, nor the shine of silver that Atlas favored. He, and his voice, had been scraped clean of luster. All that remained was a Commander, and Gray.

Lisa checked her notes. She remembered from her childhood, from combat school, that swarms were named after Goliaths, and Goliaths were rarely named.  
She asked, “Fury?”  
“Mountain Glenn,” everyone answered.  
Katt pointed at his screen, at a green trail passing through Odessa. “That intercept is about ten hours ago. Odessa's last check-in was twelve, and they signaled all-clear. That explains their extra mass, but-”  
“No distress?” Lisa blurted.  
Everyone turned to her. Katt nodded, “Exactly.”  
“But there are ten-thousand people in Odessa!”  
“There were,” Merlot mumbled.

Lisa was not familiar with protocol. She was not bound by it, anyway. “Weren't... How... How did you lose track of a group that large? Why didn't we know-”  
“-They skipped,” Katt shrugged.  
“They what?” Lisa looked to Ironwood and Gray for an answer. They were judging her outburst in their glares. She composed herself. Her cheeks flushed, but she swallowed her emotions and found her center. “What is skipping?” she struggled to say politely.

Katt's ears twitched. His hands tried to shape it. His mouth struggled to explain. “When Grimm leave detection, they... Teleport, I guess. No one's clear on the how. They'll just appear suddenly somewhere else. It only happens in large groups. They usually lose a third of their mass in the process. Fury's last known was a hundred klicks east of Atlas, three days ago. They stampeded an open-pit mine. We lost them in the dust storm.”  
“So... Hordes of Grimm can just... Appear from thin air?”  
“No. They've never appeared or disappeared where someone can see them.”  
Katt had a sad, but tempered gaze floating over Lisa. “You can understand why this isn't public knowledge,” he sighed.  
“Because it might make everyone lose a lot of faith in you,” Lisa nodded.  
“Because it doesn't help people live their lives,” Gray drawled.  
“Because fear encourages the Grimm,” Ironwood reminded her.  
Lisa considered that. She did not conclude or commit.

Merlot's head jerked to a light on her screen. She touched it. “Go ahead, Huntress.”  
The response was curt. Then the light died. Merlot frowned and relayed the news.  
“Raven Branwen. Her license is three years out of date, but she claimed to have a visual on three Goliaths. No Balefires. Heading and location matches our hit. She hung up on me.”  
Katt shook his head. “Huntsmen, am I right?”  
“Branwens,” Ironwood corrected.

Katt tapped his screen. “They're close, but-”  
Lisa asked, “How close?”  
“Thirty klicks south-east of us.”  
“They’re in Mountain Glenn again?”  
“A little past it. They’re close, but they’re heading away from us.”  
Merlot nodded in agreement. She returned to her call with Odessa. “Odessa, our hearts go out to you. Rest in peace. Eidolon, signing off.” She reached for a button that would end the call. Her hand stopped. She gripped the ear on her headset, listening intently. 

The sound was a distant wailing, like wind, but rising. And she wasn't the only one who heard it. Everyone turned down the length of the ship, over the deck.

On the horizon, they saw a rising trail of smoke.  
“That's a civilian alarm,” Katt breathed. “That's here.”  
Ironwood and Gray paced to the railing, their eyes fixed on the smoke. Lisa followed the leaders to their sides. Her eyes stayed on the rising, black pillar.

Katt cleared his throat. “It's probably just a fire.”  
“A fire on the South East wall is a problem,” Ironwood noted.  
At his side, Fleet Commander Gray murmured, “I hate being right.”

Commander Gray lifted his voice to the ceiling. “Eidolon. Raise the DefCon.”  
Klaxons sounded. The blue-white light on the bridge flicked to a deep red. The ship's computer spoke over the PA, echoing onto the flight deck.  
“Attention fleet. The Defense Condition has been raised. We are now at DefCon One. Prepare for imminent contact.”  
Lisa's heart raced. She couldn't hide the heaving of her chest. She wondered what swift horror had elapsed in Odessa. The fear made her speechless.

Katt had the opposite problem. “Sir, isn't that a bit-”  
Ironwood snapped, “Order on the bridge!”

The fear remained. Lisa's scribbling in the notepad drew a quick glance from Merlot. Lisa looked into her hands, and saw she’d written across the lines illegibly. Looking back to Merlot, she saw a red light spring to life on the display. Merlot turned to it, then scrambled to react.

“Go ahead, Vale TacCom.” All attention snapped to her. Merlot removed her headset. “Breach! Breach! We have Grimm inside the wall!”

Gray was giving orders before she finished.  
“All Hands! Helm, orient One-Two-Null, quarter-thrust. Eidolon, unseal the Mountain Glenn Protocol and signal StratCom: We are activating the Elysian Knights. Lisa, if you would be so kind, I need to clear the bridge of non-essential personnel.”

A door shut in her face. The moment passed like so many horrors in human history, and the next day, she sat at her desk with pages of notes that she would never, ever share on television. 

The fire had been caused by an abandoned train from Mountain Glenn slamming itself into Vale’s wall. The White Fang was responsible. But she couldn’t report that the White Fang was willing and able to do that; the racial tension would tear Vale apart. She couldn’t report that swarm Fury had been waiting in position, that the Grimm understood when to strike. She couldn’t report that Team RWBY from Beacon just happened to be in place to save the city. She couldn’t say that Atlas’ military knew something in advance. She could hardly talk. Because Ironwood was right: Fear draws the Grimm.

She’d appealed to Headmaster Ozpin for advice. It was good to know people in high places. His advice had arrived through a short phone call. After pleasantries, he’d only said, “Forget everything you told me.”

So Lisa was forgetting, one page at a time, letting the shredder’s rhythm lull her back to serenity. Her radio coworker, Cyril Ian, sat across from her.   
“You look pale,” he said through his lunch.  
She lowered a note page into the shredder.  
“I heard you were on Eidolon when the White Fang ran that train through the wall,” he added.  
She shredded the next page.  
“I was on the scene too late to take a picture of the wall. Got an interview with Pyrrha Nikkos. You were talking to General Ironwood, right? I bet it was scary, seeing it from the carrier.”  
She shredded the next page.  
“That bad, huh?”  
She didn't answer. She had one usable note from one page, which she copied down onto a sticky. The rest of her story would be conjecture and fabrication, but it would not incite panic. And thus it would not bring Grimm. She handed the note to Cyril, who swallowed his lunch and read in his radio voice.

“Ironwood's mission can be summarized in one sentence: To inspire confidence.”


	8. Winter in Mountain Glenn

Professor Bartholomew Oobleck firmly believed that a life of travel was the surest cure to xenophobia- for the traveling scholar. Despite being guests in his city, Winter and her Soldiers seemed to distrust the natives, including him. So he walked ahead through the city streets, his shoulder blades itching as they followed.

At the police line, he waved his credentials and passed without breaking stride. This quarter of the city had truly suffered. Grimm had returned it to nature, tearing up brick and tearing down structures. The HazMat teams had already been through, and most of the breach was now sealed, but the municipality had closed the street until structures could be examined.

The breach, a block-long crater, yawned over abandoned subway tracks. At the edge, Oobleck spotted one of his students, a third year, Coco Adel.  
He stopped at her side and read her expression aloud. “They’re monsters.”  
She nodded. Her gaze stayed down the hole, waiting for motion. The battle had ended a week ago. But for some people, the battle never really ended.

Oobleck placed a firm hand on her shoulder. Coco’s head snapped his way. She relaxed and took a step back, then gestured down the hole and reported.

“The train hit first. There was an explosion. We thought it was a White Fang attack. They had uniforms.”  
She pointed to a chalk outline in the doorway of a ruined shop.  
Coco continued, “We were still airborne. On our way to a Search and Destroy. So I had our pilot divert and circle overhead.”  
Oobleck smiled. He remembered when Coco and her team were four feet tall and scared of the woods. Now they were sortieing without oversight.  
Coco hesitated in her story. Eventually, she nodded to an impact crater. “We saw Grimm. So we dropped.”  
Bullet casings pooled in the crater. Coco’s minigun had seen action. She gestured to another crater.  
“Professor Port was taking team JNPR on their first mission. They stopped in, too.”  
Oobleck knew Coco. He understood, suddenly, that she’d returned to address her fear. He could read the stress building in her façade.

So he nodded and finished the story for her. “I’ve been told that you mobilized your team and several others, heading off what could have been a major breach of a metropolitan area. Not a single person died. You were the right person in the right place, Coco.”  
She relaxed, and he knew he’d given her catharsis.  
She whispered, “They have no idea what it’s like, outside the walls.”  
Oobleck patted her shoulder. “With huntsmen like you, they never will.”

Specialist Winter stepped into the conversation. She’d drawn her saber.  
“Doctor. If you don’t mind.”  
Oobleck nodded and said his partings to Coco.

The Winter Soldiers unslung their rifles and activated their digital camouflage. The pattern broke only across their backs, where names were spelled out in solid colors. The uniforms inherited the hues of their surroundings, and the soldiers passed into the darkness of Mountain Glenn's tunnels as midnight blue silhouettes.

Winter Schnee and Bartholomew Oobleck followed close behind, down into the hole, onto the train tracks. The soldiers switched shoulder torches on, and the party began a long walk into the Great Mistake.

Oobleck knew they were close when the point man halted. The temperature change caught many off-guard. Twenty degrees across two feet. And huntsmen noted the other effect. Specialist Winter broke stride as she crossed.

Oobleck explained, “It’s subtle… But over the next forty hours, our auras will drain away. Another twenty, and fatigue sets in. Another twenty, and death. We take our fourth years here, to instill in them a sense of mortality.”  
Winter resumed her pace, unfazed, but asked Professor Oobleck, “Then why do you take first years down here?”  
“An exception was made for team RWBY.”  
Winter smiled, "I know she's a pushy girl, Doctor, but you risked my sister's life."

Oobleck thought to himself that Winter's face belonged on a skin cream billboard- something with a waterfall and a tranquil pond and a haiku. Despite that, he could sense the tension holding her together. It was in her sudden footsteps, in the grip of her hands behind her waist. He felt the intense anger in her aura. Oobleck blinked through that fury and answered, "Who? Ah, yes, Weiss, pushy. Haha. What an understatement. She has no lack of self-esteem. But no, that was not the reason. The exception was made for her teammates. Their extensive field experience, and Ruby's…”   
He remembered suddenly that there were things he couldn't say.   
“… Miss Rose’s leadership abilities were deemed fit for the challenge.”  
He checked her expression. Nothing had changed.

She conceded, “I’m glad she’s had an adventure. Just one.”  
Oh.  
So no one had told her about Team RWBY’s second visit to Mountain Glenn, nor their near death experience on Merlot Island. 

Winter was getting her intel from Weiss. Oobleck decided to trust her discretion.

Winter continued. “I’m interested in Weiss’ faunus teammate.”   
Blake Belladonna. Oobleck knew to keep quiet.  
The Specialist picked her words slowly. “I assumed this was one of Ozpin's infamous social experiments- that he’d put a faunus with a Schnee just to be unorthodox.”  
“Teams were paired randomly this year,” Oobleck corrected.  
Winter stopped. Her calm broke. It seemed her whole mind had broken. She turned an incredulous glare to him. She blinked at Oobleck, trying to understand, then to comprehend, then to accept. Her lips poised for a question, then changed to another.   
Winter finally said, “It seems to me that the whole of Vale is an experiment in Chaos.”  
Oobleck shrugged, smiled, and tipped his safari helm. “Welcome to the Emerald City.”  
Winter shook her head free of the madness, and the party's walk continued.  
“We'll set that aside,” she decided, “Because I'm curious about the faunus. Weiss told me that she was a run-of-the-mill, hard-headed, uneducated young girl, and that Weiss had taken her under her wing. But you believe that she has exceptional combat ability?”  
Oobleck wore the most innocent ignorance he could, and asked, “Blake?”  
Winter nodded. “Yes. Blake. Blake Whisker.”  
Oobleck imagined the conversation: Weiss playing with her hair and stacking lies like cards. The truth would turn Winter into a blizzard. Oobleck decided not to disturb that storm.

“Well... Yes,” he said.  
“Yes, she's exceptional?”   
Oobleck steeled himself, but had no answer. He didn't need one. The soldier on point, Hikari, raised her fist, then horns. White Fang. The soldiers cut their shoulder torches and sprinted to the tunnel's sides. 

Ahead of them flickered a light, illuminating the first station in Mountain Glenn proper. Hikari had spotted a White Fang uniform standing against a building. They edged closer to see that the faunus radical was now just a corpse. But it was fresh. This one had died in the skirmish with Oobleck and team RWBY, defending the explosive train. Oobleck closed the faunus’ eyes. Beside him, Winter whispered, “As I heard it, you had quite the battle on this train. There’s only one body?”  
“Team RWBY made a point of avoiding casualties. We’re Huntsmen, not soldiers.”  
He rejoined the Winter Soldiers as they advanced cover-to-cover.

Oobleck’s inspection hadn't been so thorough on his last visit to the station. Now he saw the ancient luggage piled against the walls. He was interested in the sociological implications. Every packed bag was a snapshot of a life ending. The Winter Soldiers had their own inspection running. One soldier, “WHITE” written across his back, waved a wand over the luggage. He checked the wand’s readout, then shook his head. They moved on.

Their march was long, made longer as they avoided Grimm. Eight hours later, all panting, they sealed the doors of the CCT behind them.

Inside, the building’s ambient light kept enough shadows at bay for everyone to relax. Through the shroud of darkness, they could see what remained of the CCT’s foyer. Tables and chairs had been upended. High-impact rounds scored the walls. A glass arrow, embedded in the floor, prismed their flashlight beams. Agent Hikari had point. She looked down, at a muddy footprint ahead of her. Then, realizing, she lifted her own boot, and matched the mark to its maker. She turned to Winter and whispered, “Specialist?” 

Winter stepped forward. She tensed, and Oobleck felt her aura surge out to ping the room. She nodded, and said louder, “No Grimm.”  
Oobleck pinged his out to double check. Winter shot him a look of annoyance. 

Hikari turned to the rest of the Retinue. “If the engineers followed the book, the reactor was shrouded before they left. We have no power until the shroud is removed. White, help me pry open the elevator. Cherry and Orchid are going down. Specialist, security please. White?”

White had paced ahead, following his wand’s beeping. “I got something,” he announced.  
And he lifted it from the floor: A white cape, the inside bearing the crest of a rose, the bottom weighted by iron crosses. White flipped up a tag inside the collar and read aloud, “If lost, return to Summer Rose.”

Oobleck considered objecting. By all rights, the cape now belonged to Ruby Rose. And Ruby would want it. But he had guessed what the retinue was detecting. He knew they would need it. White bagged the cape and joined Hikari at the elevator. She replaced her helmet, and the soldiers scrambled to work. Winter crept to the doctor’s side.

She asked, “Oobleck? You still haven't answered my question.”  
“Your what?”  
“Weiss' team mate. The Faunus. You sent them into danger. More than I know Weiss was ready for. So what is so special about Blake Whisker?”  
Bartholomew Oobleck ran a hand under his safari helm. “To be honest, Miss Schnee, most of our students are spoiled children who have never left the walls. Their combat school certification only means that they are responsible with their weapons and can follow instructions. Nothing more. It is at Beacon that we select the warriors, then train them, then test them. Weiss is no exception. No. Yes. I have exceptionally low hopes for her in solo combat. Meanwhile, Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long both grew up in Patch.”  
“I've never heard of Patch.”  
“Precisely. It is an island hundreds of miles from civilization. So survivalism is second-nature to them. Professor Ozpin found Ruby because she was holding her ground against two rogue huntsmen in actual combat. She forced them to retreat, wielding a sniper-scythe, mind you.”  
Winter nodded. “That's very impressive,” she admitted.  
“Yes. I'm glad you understand.”  
Her voice dropped an octave. “But I didn't ask about Ruby Rose.”  
Oobleck feigned innocence. “Honestly, I've forgotten your question.”  
Winter hissed, “Blake. The Faunus. Is she incompetent, or not?”  
Bartholomew huffed, frustrated. “Specialist, if you'll take my word for it, just know that Miss Belladonna is on par with Ruby Rose.”  
For a second time, he'd cracked her facade. Her irises contracted in realization, and a single eyebrow lifted.   
She swallowed. “Belladonna,” she said.  
Oops, Oobleck thought.  
Winter squared her shoulders at him and advanced until he was breathing her air. He was reminded of the burning sensation intense cold inflicts.  
“Belladonna? As in Blake Belladonna, Queen of the Hunt? Princess of the White Fang?”  
Bartholomew steeled his gaze, but didn't answer.  
The soldiers had picked up on Winter's cold front, and consolidated their attention.  
“No,” Oobleck finally said. “I mean Blake Belladonna, the sixteen year old girl who has diplomatic immunity so long as she's a student at Beacon.”  
Winter had pursed her lips into a singularity. Her nose flinched. With the utmost containment, she threatened, “I will be speaking to Ozpin about this.”  
“Wait,” Hikari realized aloud.  
White added, “Holy shit, do you mean-”  
“Shadowcat?” the soldiers said in unison.  
“White, didn’t she shoot you?” Hikari noted.  
“Yeah. And isn’t she on the kill list?”  
“Number three,” Winter hissed.  
“Formerly, you mean,” Oobleck corrected.

The lights flicked on and the building whirred to life. A holographic assistant appeared where her desk had been, then stood awkwardly from a non-existent chair. The image turned to address Oobleck. “Hello, and welcome to the Mountain Glenn CCT Tower. We are having connectivity issues at the moment. How can I direct you?”

He presented Winter with his shoulder, and walked out on her conversation, to address the hologram. “I take it your systems are mostly intact. Can you perform a diagnostic on the local network?”  
“Credentials, please,” the hologram smiled.  
He rushed, “DoctorBartholomewOobleckBeaconAcademy.”  
The hologram froze to think. “I'm sorry, Sir. Could you please repeat that slower?”  
Oobleck sighed and flicked his arms out, dispelling adrenaline. “Doc-tor, Bar-tho-lo-mew, Oo-bleck, from Bea-con.”  
“Welcome.”  
“Thank you. Now could you please give an inventory of the primary dust vein and a diagnostic of the mining network?”  
“I'm sorry, but all data is historical. My network extends no farther than shrouded equipment. This is possibly due to a catastrophic diaspora effect.”  
“Historical data?” Winter asked, impatient.  
Oobleck repeated the request.  
“At last estimate, twelve years ago, over two-hundred megatons of dust-laden rock was within range. All of that Dust was depleted by a catastrophic diaspora event. No viable Dust remains.”

A soldier noted, “Just like Chernobyl.”  
Winter’s eyelids flared in frustration. “Well, then. Thank you for coming along, Doctor Oobleck. I hope the trip wasn't a complete waste of your time. I've certainly wasted mine.”  
She turned away from him, to leave.  
“You're closer than you know,” Oobleck assured her.  
She turned back to Oobleck. “The Dust is gone, Doctor. I came here to find Dust. And I didn’t.”  
She searched his eyes. She found resolve. And Oobleck spoke now in an intentional and calculated tone. “The Survey contract was placed on hold until Atlas could send a Force Specialist from across the world. You’re here to do a geologist’s job? I doubt that.”  
“And what do you think we’re doing, Doctor?”  
Oobleck smiled. “Tell me, Winter, what does that machine detect?”  
He pointed to White, to the soldier’s wand. After a long pause, Winter admitted, “Anomalous Dustronics and electromagnetism.”  
“Anomalous implies unpredictable. But you brought it here, and your predictions were met with success, weren’t they?”  
“Do you know something that I don't, Doctor?”  
“I know a great many things that you do not, Specialist.”  
Winter closed her eyes and licked her lips, trying to be patient. She swallowed, then asked, “Would you be willing to share?”  
Oobleck laughed, nervously. He relaxed against a table and folded his arms. “Specialist, if you can't follow the trail, don't.”  
“You’ve already implied that you know my mission, Doctor. You know what happens if I give up.”  
“Yes. This, again.” He nodded at the carnage around them.  
“Probably in Vale,” Winter noted.  
“I do very dearly hope you will succeed,” Oobleck smiled.  
Winter’s fury peaked. Her fists gripped tight. She hissed, “I have the impression that everyone but my team knows what’s going on. If you want us to complete this mission, you have to tell me what you know, Doctor.”  
Oobleck frowned, like a historian at humanity’s mistakes. He said, “That’s what we did to the last Specialist.”  
Winter’s fury abated. She looked like the sun had risen off schedule, or the stars had forgotten to shine. So Weiss wasn’t the only one lying to her. General Ironwood had omitted that she was walking a path marked by graves.  
“I can give you a hint,” Oobleck decided.  
And he very pointedly asked, “Do you know the story of the Four Maidens?”  
Winter snapped, “It’s a children’s story.”  
Agent Hikari stepped forward. “Four girls helped an old man. He rewarded their virtue with power. They created the seasons. The Winter Maiden founded the city of Mantle.”   
Specialist Winter turned a raised eyebrow to the Agent. “You believe that?”  
Hikari opened her mouth. She hesitated. “The Retinue was formed to protect the Winter Maiden. The authority of the Crown of Mantle is derived from her power.”  
Oobleck cleared his throat. “Let’s focus on the Fall Maiden.”


	9. Chernobyl

Qrow Branwen had little down time in his line of work, and most of it was in the field. For now, he had a free day in Vale with Ruby and Yang. Ozpin had just put him on the backburner, since Ironwood assured everyone that he was on top of the whole end-of-the-world thing. Winter was on top of it.

Ozpin had told him to back off and let her handle it. Ozpin had told him exactly that, face-to-face, like he was waiting for a reaction. Like Qrow couldn't be trusted to work with her, or around her, or in spite of her. And Qrow had shrugged it off, because an adult should be able to take this in stride. The best he could do was stay sober and put it out of his mind. So he knocked on team RWBY's door and hoped Weiss wouldn't answer and the girls wouldn't have homework and something would just go his goddamn way for once.

Ruby opened the door. Oh god, did she look like Summer. And then Yang, hunched over a controller at the room's center, furiously mashing buttons and glaring at the screen like the first day he'd met Tai.

“Hey,” he said then and now.  
Yang lit up and chimed in time with Ruby, “Uncle QroOOOOOOOOOOW!”  
Most men would never be as thankful for life as Qrow was in these moments. They sat and talked, learned to play Bloody Ninja Murder from the grandmaster himself, and all enjoyed being children. This was only dampened when Yang called Qrow old, and when they asked about Raven.

For an absent mother, Raven Branwen had incredible presence. They’d just seen Summer in recording. It was natural they’d ask about Yang’s biological mother.

“What was she like? Was she always... You know?” Yang asked.  
Qrow set down the controller. He tried to remember her in a better light, for their sake.  
“Your mother,” he said to Yang, “was fearless. And I mean that literally. She told me once... Lemme back up. So we were in Atlas. This was after we graduated. Team STRQ was pretty famous back in its day. Everybody knew who we were. Contracts were lining up. There were biddings just to get our attention. We had,” he laughed at this, “we had a reporter embedded with us on one of our missions, just to write a story.”  
“You were cool?” Ruby asked.  
“I still am!” he pointed.  
“We know you're cool, Uncle Qrow,” Yang smiled.  
“And don't forget it. Well your mother was the coolest of the cool. Everybody wanted to know who she was dating, who she was thinking about. She was like… Who’s in your generation?”  
“Pyrrha Nikkos?” Yang offered.  
Qrow pointed at her.  
“Pyrrha. She was like Pyrrha. Now Raven wasn’t on any cereal boxes, but Ebon Merlot proposed to her.”  
Ruby asked, “Who?”  
“The Merlots,” Yang said in a solemn tone.  
“Oh,” Ruby remembered.  
“Yeah, they're mostly dead now,” Qrow sighed, “But they were a big deal in life. And you should have seen Raven thinking about it. My sister...” he struggled through the discomfort of admitting, “was very attractive in her youth. Her eyes weren't red, by the way. They were purple. And she knew how to look dangerous in a dress. Just imagine Mr. Merlot, basically a Schnee, kneeling in front of her, while she looks like the Empress of Remnant. Anyway, she turned him down. Gave a flowery speech, too. Did I mention she's a poet? Was. She said she wanted to marry an adventurer and live her life out in the wild. Industry wasn't her thing. She'd take a range over a castle any day.”  
Yang was stuck on, “Her eyes weren't red? When did that change?”  
“Well, whenever she was in a fight. No. Not always. Whenever she got hit. Whenever she got hurt, or mad, or once when we watched a sad movie. Actually, I don't think she ever cried in her life. She'd get really serious and focused more. Your mom was always a professional. She'd wait till she had a spare moment, tell us she needed some alone time, and go meditate. Then she'd come back all smiles, and she was her normal self again. Your mother didn't like to dump her problems on other people.”

He was lost in the past, and had forgotten to keep sharing it. Ruby poked him.  
“Uncle Qrow!”  
“Huh? Right. Well, fear is a good thing. Fear keeps you safe. You know when you're about to make a decision, like a really big decision, and you aren't sure it's going to work? There's that impulse to turn around and run away.”  
“Like when I'm flirting with the guys,” Yang said.  
Qrow paused, and realized that Yang was about that age.  
“Eww,” Ruby said.  
“Grow up, Ruby,” Yang hissed.  
“No. Don't,” Qrow corrected, “But yeah. Like when you're flirting with danger. And suddenly there's that primal instinct to play it safe. Well Raven never had that. And that explains a lot of why she was successful. There was nothing weighing her down. She could look someone in the eye and they'd know that she was about to give it her all. Well, and she was a great fighter.”  
Ruby inserted, “Like Pyrrha!”  
“Yeah. So then we went to Chernobyl. You kids remember Chernobyl? Too young. Who’s your faunus teammate?”  
“Blake?”  
“Yeah. Ask her about it.”  
“Was she there?”  
Qrow tongued his teeth, picking something out of a crevice and dodging the question. He continued, “Chernobyl was a little before Mountain Glenn. The Schnees had a refinery underground. The weather there is deadly. So the dust would get refined inside the mine. And by the time it got topside, it was usable. And this place was BIG. Well, back then- this was just the way things were- all the miners were faunus. And all the executives, and technicians, and guards, and soldiers- everybody else was human. So when the mine started blowing up, the humans just left the faunus down there and ran away.”  
“How many people...” Yang wondered.  
“Thousands. Maybe ten. Place is huge. Used to be the bulk of Atlas' strategic reserve. So they wanted someone to go clear the site of Grimm and see what could be salvaged. And they hired team STRQ.”  
He trailed off again. Ruby was invested in the story. She poked him.  
“So we cleared all the Grimm. And we turned on the control room. Only... Nothing was working. The mine had these big blast doors, from the Great War, back when there were bombing runs. And everything under the blast doors wasn't working. Only the stuff topside. So someone had to go down there and test the dust vein.”  
“You sent Raven?” Ruby guessed.  
“Sent? No. She just went.”  
He sat quietly for a long time, and didn't answer when Ruby poked him again.

He was standing beside the doors. The elevator was jammed, about five meters below its platform. Raven stood at his side. Summer and Tai were on the radio, back in the control room. Raven had helped him carry a cable from there. They dropped it at the blast doors and set to work connecting it to the emergency systems.

“You know...” Raven said, “You don't have to do this, Qrow.”  
“Do what?”  
“You like Summer. Everybody knows it.”  
“Nah. Tai likes Summer.”  
“But so do you. You don't have to back down on this.”  
“Tai's been a little down lately,” Qrow mumbled.  
“So you're going to let him use her like a crutch?”  
“He likes her,” Qrow asserted.  
“She likes you,” Raven said.  
“It's a crush,” Qrow sighed.  
He turned back to the control room and pushed the bead in his ear.  
“We're all hooked up down here, Tai.”  
“Yeah, I see that. We have a connection now, but... Bad responses from all machines. Error, error... Oh boy. The whole log just flooded with errors. Yeah, everything's broken.”  
Qrow sighed and released his earpiece.   
Raven had a scheming smile. “Suppose Tai wasn't after Summer.”  
“What?”  
“If Tai doesn't want Summer, will you go for her?”  
“I don't wanna make things weird.”  
“Will you?”  
“It doesn't matter, because he is interested in Summer.”  
Raven laughed. Her head shook. She wore dark glasses back then, to hide the light that always gleamed from her eyes. But Qrow remembered her without them, and saw the way they sparkled, like amethysts dancing on an ocean.  
“Oh, Qrow. Men are hopeless.”  
“Huh?”  
“Tai and I are a couple.”  
“What?”  
“Summer doesn't know, and I don't want to break her little heart. So do me a favor and distract her, okay?”  
“Why... If you knew she liked him-”  
“I didn't! And anyway, someone's gotta go down here.”  
“Sooner the better,” Qrow agreed.  
He looked out over the camp. Something about the layout had been bothering him. Now, from the innermost layer of fences, he realized it.  
“Raven,” he breathed.  
She looked around, at the fences, the barricades, the checkpoints, and the walls.   
Her coy smile was gone. She said, “You too, huh?”  
“This place is a cage. I don’t think these miners…”   
It wasn’t his job. He shook his head. “Let’s get this done.”  
They looked down the mine shaft. The wind in Chernobyl was stale and cold, the kind that rattled bones and stripped leaves from trees. Passing through the blast doors and winding down, it made a faint wailing sound, as if the dead were calling up to them. Qrow didn't feel fear. He sensed it in there, waiting for him like a trap. He wondered how Raven could be blind to it. She hopped down onto the elevator.

“Uncle QROOOOOOOOOOOOOW!”  
Ruby was waving a hand in front of him.  
“You gotta tell us what happened!”  
“Ruby,” Yang cautioned.  
Qrow spared them the details.  
“So someone had to go down. Well, your mother hopped onto the elevator... And it gave out under her weight. Fell five-hundred meters straight down, walls on all sides.”  
Yang and Ruby gasped. They had studied and practiced aural landing strategies. They knew how impossible it was to survive without room to maneuver.  
“Well, she survived the fall.”  
“Was she hurt?”  
“No. She was a pro. And she lit one of her chem lights down there. But her radio wasn't working. There was a lot of interference.”

He was there again. Shouting at the bead in his ear. And all he got back was a whisper, some ethereal voice, quiet and monotone, but clear.  
“-there will be no rest there will be no love there will be no hero in the end who will rise above and when it ends the good will fall-”  
The words tumbled out of that darkness, broken only by bursts of Static, and Raven's voice struggling to message him.  
“I'm okay! Bzzt. Crackle. Whispering? Qrow? bzzt. Say again!”  
“Raven. Raven, what?”  
The static abated.  
“Qrow? There's something down here. There's... Qrow?”  
“Raven? What’s down there?”  
He could see her silhouette, the green glow of her chem light illuminating only her. She was rigid, the light held overhead, her blade shaking in her fist.   
“Qrow,” she whispered.  
“Qrow, I'm scared.”  
She left her mic open, but the static came like a wave and overpowered everything. The wind accelerated, and the damned howling swirled up from the cave. Darkness crept up her silhouette, consuming her, until the chem light flickered out in her hand.

To Ruby and Yang he said, “We threw some lights in after her, but we couldn't see anything. And we couldn't go down without rappelling. We'd brought gear for that, but it takes a while to set up. By the time we had... Well the elevator jerked to life, and Raven came up to meet us.”

She had curled into a ball, her eyes dark and crimson. Where her face had been plump and her complexion flushed, she was now and forever harrowed and pale white. She wouldn't answer when Qrow talked to her. She retracted from Summer's touch. But she wrapped her arms around Tai and only managed to whisper, “I want to go home.”

“We had some explosive satchels,” Qrow said, “So we sent those down the elevator and got the hell out of there. About nine months after that, you were born,” he nodded to Yang, “and then she disappeared.”  
He reached for his flask, but remembered with some shame to not do that in front of them.  
“And that was the end of team STRQ,” he finished.

Ruby was quiet.  
But Yang had one of those questions no one was ready or qualified to answer.  
“Do you think… She regrets having me?”  
Qrow pulled his flask and drank. He thought. He wished a better man could take his place in this moment.  
“I went looking for your mom. So did Tai. So did Summer. We found her trail sometimes. She kept up with her work, and there were money transfers and bank accounts. She didn't want anything to do with us. She didn't want anything to do with anybody. Never went to the same places twice. But... Well, I called in a favor from someone I know in Atlas. At the end of last semester, a Specialist spotted her-”  
“You know a Specialist?” Ruby gasped.  
Yang leaned in, her eyes wide and intense. “Is it true they can teleport at will and have infinite auras?”  
Qrow cocked his head. He’d never herd that one before. He smiled.  
“Girls, Atlas’ Force Specialists are Huntsmen- just like you and me. They’re not any more or less spooky. But yeah, I know one.” Qrow grumbled, “And she found Raven in Atlas. And she... Uh... Well...”  
She was dressing up with Grimm bones and drinking human blood, he didn't say.  
“Well, it was right when you got on that train in Mountain Glenn, Yang. You said Raven appeared and saved you? Well twenty minutes before that, she was on a hunt in Vacuo. She crossed the whole world, went into Mountain Glenn alone, and rescued you on that train. Then she tracked me down in Mistral, same night. Woke me up, and told me to keep a closer eye on you.”

Yang didn't look any happier. She didn't know what to make of that.  
Qrow sighed. “Look, she isn't a good mother. But... If Raven didn't want you, you'd be dead.”


	10. Monochrome Dreams

Weiss Schnee had a problem. Not only was she not Team Leader, she was not “leader material.” She'd confided her dreams in every instructor, and every single one had laughed at her. The day had started horribly for her ego. She was retreating to her room, to her friends. She checked the time. They were all in classes for the next three hours. She could at least play with Ruby’s stupid dog and cry alone.

She was crossing the courtyard when she passed behind team CFVY. They were third years, returning from live-fire drills and talking energetically. As she passed Velvet Scarlatina, the bunny girl said, “It's like Weiss is oblivious. A Schnee can't just tell Blake to forget and forgive. That's not fair!”

Weiss stopped and snapped back, “Why not?”  
The whole team stopped. Velvet tensed, then slowly turned to see. But she ignored Weiss, and scrunched her nose at her teammate, Fox, instead. “Thanks for the warning.”  
Fox's blind eyes were looking dead ahead. But he smiled and shrugged, “I warned you that you were talking big again. Thought that was enough.”  
She looked to her side and up, up, up, where Yatsuhashi nodded in agreement.  
From six and a half feet up he grumbled, “Velvet, if your words are as important as you thought them to be, now is the time to share them.”  
He gestured from Velvet to Weiss. But Velvet turned to Coco for help.  
The team leader scowled. “Don't look at me. You started this.”

Weiss placed her hands on her hips and shouted, “I asked you a question, Velvet!”  
Velvet had no one to hide behind. She sighed. “Look, Weiss, I don't know how Ruby is as a team leader, but she can't be worse than you.”  
“Why not? I'm a good fighter, a better tactician, and a lot smarter than almost everyone here!”

Velvet cringed. “Not really.”  
Fox and Yatsuhashi knew to take a few steps away from the coming girl fight.

Weiss let her mouth hang open. She was too shocked to answer.  
Velvet pressed, “But I was thinking more about Chernobyl. You know, that little genocide issue your family perpetrated against faunus kind?”  
Fox pursed his lips. Coco and Yatsuhashi didn't recognize the name.  
Weiss did. She scoffed. “I was two when that happened, Velvet.”  
“Well… Blake was older.”  
“Four,” Fox whispered.  
Weiss retorted, “It isn't my fault!”  
Velvet pointed, “You're wearing the SDC logo on your vest, Weiss!”  
“It's my family crest!”  
Velvet stamped her foot. “Your family committed genocide.”

Coco's eyes darted across the courtyard, where Professor Goodwitch had stopped, sensing trouble. Coco waved her all-clear, and put a hand on her teammate.  
“Hold on, Velvet. You've lost me. What's Chern- That word?”  
“Really, Coco?”  
Yatsuhashi nodded, “I do not know, either.”  
“I can't believe you two!”  
Fox stepped closer. “Calm down, Velvet. It was a long time ago.”  
“A long time ago? Fox, that doesn't change it!”  
“Not for us,” Fox admitted. “But it had no effect on Coco's life, and it isn't a recent event. You can't expect people to know history just because it matters to you.”  
Velvet's emotions had been building with the topic. Coco removed her hand from Velvet’s shoulder, and the bunny faunus steadied her breathing.

“You’re right, Fox. I can’t expect it from just anybody. But I can expect it from a Snow Queen,” she decided.  
And all eyes were returned to Weiss.

“Snow Queen?! How is that any different from me calling you a furry? I have a name!”  
Velvet nodded instead of apologizing. She folded her hands in front of her and tried to keep a steady voice as she asked, “Okay, Schnee. What do you know about Chernobyl?”

Weiss folded her arms and huffed, preparing a spiel.  
“Everything. It was the world's third largest Dust mine. But it was the densest and purest. The reactor was built underground so it could operate regardless of weather conditions. But the engineers didn't correctly factor in ambient sensor occlusion in low output situations, so the automated system flooded the primary chamber with pyroflux and poisoned the reactor core. The human operator had bad information from his sensors and tried to solve the problem by re-burning expended core material. That started a self-sustaining reaction that was out of operator control. They attempted to flush the super-reaction down an empty mine shaft, but it detonated while it was being handled. The reaction contaminated the raw Dust vein, and... It spread before anyone had a chance to evacuate.”

Velvet licked her lips and said, “You make it sound like an accident. But every single human staff member survived. And ten-thousand faunus went boom.”

“No, they didn't, Velvet. There was no boom. It was a diaspora phenomenon. The Dust vein shirked its energy all at once, and every living thing had its aura stripped from its body. The structures are standing just as they were. It was quick. They probably didn't know they were dead. You're right, though. My father was negligent with the lives of our faunus employees. But we have acknowledged and corrected that. Father made us memorize every detail of what went wrong there. We've made huge strides revolutionizing safety in the energy sector, and SDC has less than a hundred work-related fatalities per year. That may sound high, but... Well, mining is dangerous.”

Velvet folded her arms across her chest, and noted with glances to her sides that she was alone in her offensive. “Well… I didn't know that. You should tell more people that, Weiss. It could cure a lot of the animosity-”  
“We've made that public knowledge every year. And no, Velvet, it hasn't helped me make friends.”  
Weiss understood, as the words left her mouth, how hopeless her cause was. And more than being lonely, she hated letting people see it.  
She whimpered, “Excuse me,” and left before they could see her cry.  
Coco sighed. “Great, Velvet. You Blake'd it.”

These were the very scorns Weiss had hoped to avoid by becoming a huntress. Father had assured her that Huntsmen were a family. Somehow, she was still the pariah. But her brilliant mind had just been handed the solution to the puzzle. Her first test was Blake Belladonna. She had to prove, to herself, to Blake, and to the whole of Remnant, that this was not an alliance of circumstance or convenience.

Schnees stored their favors in the military. So Weiss had no trouble inviting herself plus one to a gala aboard Eidolon at the last minute. This was an invitation no one could squint at. Or so she'd thought. Blake's reluctance was immediate and obvious.

Back in their dorm room, Blake stared at the invitation like she’d been handed used toilet paper.  
Weiss was polite enough to offer her an out. “Of course, if you're busy...”  
Her smile was forced. And in hesitating, her force faltered. Weiss felt a weight drop in her gut when Blake shook her head.  
“No. No, we should hang out together, Weiss. And now's a good time, too. I like that idea. But...”  
Blake pointed at the invitation, as if the problem was obvious. Weiss couldn't see a flaw in the wonderful evening she'd prepared.  
“Maybe, somewhere else,” Blake tried.  
Weiss gaped. “Blake, it's a carrier! I don't think I'll even get this chance again! Do you never want to see the inside of a carrier? Or, or stand on the bridge and look out over all of Vale? Or-”  
“Weiss, I've already been.” Blake swallowed the lumpy fact and licked her lips.   
Weiss didn’t understand. “What? When? How?”  
Blake held her hands out, as if it was obvious. “Um… Remember I was… you know… In the White Fang?”  
“Oh,” Weiss realized.  
“Yeah. I kind of… Went on board once? And… Well, I think they'll remember me.”  
“Okay,” Weiss agreed. “Maybe we should go somewhere else.”  
“I know a nice Cafe in downtown,” Blake smiled. “It's very friendly.”  
Weiss took a step back. “The one Sun Wukong took you to?”  
“Eww- no- the one I took him to,” Blake laughed.  
“Okay. It's a date, then,” Weiss smiled.  
Blake did not smile. She froze. “What?”  
“It's a date,” Weiss repeated.  
Blake cleared her throat. “Um... It's a... It's a what?”  
Weiss didn't understand the problem. She thought through her diction, second guessing her manners. They weren't talking business, so it wasn't a meeting. They weren't consulting, so it wasn't an appointment.  
“It's an... Engagement?” Weiss tried.  
“N-No. We're just friends, Weiss.”  
“Yeah? So?”  
“So... It's called hanging out. It's not a date.”  
Weiss squinted at the casual phrase. Hanging out. She tried it quietly on her mouth.  
“Very well,” she said.  
Yang and Ruby entered a minute later, just as Weiss and Blake were ready to head out.  
“Going somewhere?” Yang asked Blake.  
Weiss was excited by her first self-made play date. She interrupted, “Oh, we're just hanging out.”  
She used air quotes to show that she knew she was using slang and shouldn't be judged for it. Yang stopped everything and stared at her, mouth slightly gaping. She looked to Blake for an explanation.   
Ruby asked, “Wait. Weiss, you and Blake are dating? But you're both girls.”  
Yang corrected, “Ruby, girls date sometimes.”  
Blake hid her face.

They arrived half-an-hour later. Blake had been right. It was a nice place. Very friendly, as she'd put it. She hadn't specified Faunus friendly. She hadn't specified that it was a tea house, either. And the waiter appeared too early for Weiss to start her small talk and look at the menu. She'd barely sat down before she was being interrogated about her choice of drink.  
“What can I start for you?” the intruder threatened.  
Weiss looked for her menu, then opened it, then realized she was expected to answer quickly.  
“I... Um...”  
She looked through the menu and saw Tea. And Tea. And more Tea. This was not a café. She’d just walked into a tea house. She hoped there weren’t any cameras. Father would send an extraction team if he heard she was in a tea house. But she could hardly ask Blake to leave now that they were here. Still... Tea?  
She swallowed her pride and said, “Well. Isn’t this cultural. I’ll have Tea, please.”  
The waitress, and Blake, were staring at her.  
“Tea?”  
“Y-Yes,” Weiss nodded.  
“You've come to the right place, Miss. Did you have a particular tea in mind?”  
Blake interrupted, “Oolong for me.”  
The waitress didn't bat an eye at that breach of protocol. She even looked away from Weiss to write it down.  
“And some strawberry crepes and mint biscuits,” Blake added.  
Weiss caught Blake's glance in her direction. She'd seen it before in their live-fire drills, when Blake was covering her movement. Blake was buying her time. Weiss seized the menu and hurried to order.  
“Jasmine,” was a word she recognized.  
When the waitress left, Weiss took a moment to settle her nerves, then sighed, and forced her smile out.  
“Well, then. This is pleasant.”  
“Yeah,” Blake agreed.  
Weiss had prepared several topics for small talk. She tried to start with questions about Blake's time with Sun.  
Blake spoke first. “I heard about you and Velvet.”  
Weiss guessed that argument was about to repeat itself.   
But Blake was smiling. “I heard you told her off pretty good. Team Coffee likes you.”  
“What did I say?”  
“You know how a lot of people hear something through the CCT and don't question it? Well, the faunus community uses word of mouth. And the word is Velvet mouthed off to you about Chernobyl, which she only knows about through rumors.”  
The faunus waitress returned with their drinks. Weiss inspected the rim of her cup for fur, then leaned back to her friend's gossip. “Go on.”  
Blake held her tea below her nose and smiled. “Is it true?”  
“Well, I was having a bad day, because-” Weiss stopped herself. Her instructors had enumerated her character flaws. She didn't want to share that. And she didn't want to say anything that would get back to Velvet and make her feel the same way.

“I was eavesdropping,” Weiss admitted. “Velvet said that we couldn't be friends. And I didn't want to hear that. So I started an argument.”  
“You and Velvet can't be friends?”  
“No. She said you and I can't be friends.”  
“Oh.” Blake lifted her tea to sip. Weiss was too afraid to ask if it was true. But Blake set her cup down and asked, “Did you set her straight?”  
Joy plowed through Weiss’ facade, and she realized that a real smile feels much better than a fake one.  
“No. I mean, yes. But... I mean that...”  
Her fingers played with the teacup. Her eyes looked down into the drink. She forced her chin up and said, “I argued with her because I was afraid she was right.”  
Blake didn't often look sympathetic. But now, she reached across the table and put a hand on Weiss'. She tried to say something, then held the words and licked her lips.  
She said, “You make it really hard sometimes. But I can't judge you by the circumstances of your birth. Not after you've looked past mine. We can only really judge who we are now.”  
Weiss didn't want to show it, but that acknowledgment of her agency woke a limb neglected by her family.  
Her eyes watered. She mumbled, “Thank you, Blake.”  
Blake looked down. She had already crossed into uncomfortable amounts of connecting. Weiss knew not to expect more. She was shocked when Blake said, “Don't take this the wrong way. But you make me think… I was wrong about the Schnees.”  
“And I was wrong about the faunus,” Weiss agreed. Her disgust triggered, and she remembered, “Although Sun is still a degenerate animal.”  
Blake looked for a second as if she would take offense. Then she nodded and whispered, “Yeah, actually.”  
“Did something happen?”  
“He took me on a date and, well, 'forgot' his wallet.”  
“That brute!”  
“Yeah,” Blake nodded.  
The moment had ended. Blake's eyes darted over Weiss' shoulder, and her sympathy fell into the moody face she wore in class. Before Weiss could turn to see, Blake whispered, “Don't look. You should go.”  
Her gut filled in the situation. “Is it Jaune? He has flowers again, doesn’t he?”  
“Yeah. I'll cover for you. Go. Now.”  
“See you in the dorm,” Weiss nodded.  
She stood and hurried out, keeping her shoulders squared to the door and preparing to ignore Jaune Arc's desperate advances. But he never called. She passed outside undisturbed. Something was wrong. She couldn’t resist a glance. Blake had lied. Jaune wasn't there. But in the booth across from Blake sat five faunus. They had all frozen mid-sip, smoldering anger directed Weiss’ way. Their off-hands were beneath the table.

The pack leader set his tea down, and Weiss read on his lips, “Been a long time, Belladonna.”


	11. Here With Me

Yang Xiao Long had lived a whole happy year without thinking of her biological mother. Now Raven was crashing into her thoughts again, like the train she’d nearly died on.

Aside from a decades old photograph, Yang had no idea what the woman looked like. From stories, she knew Raven had played the parts of both hero and villain. There was a statue of her in Vacuo. The police had slapped her wanted poster on it.

Tai said she had a soft side that she only revealed in private moments, like a candle held against her breast. Qrow said she just couldn't show her love. Yang felt like she was being spared from the truth she'd already deduced.

She sat up on her dorm room bed, and she said to the clouds out the window, “She doesn't love me.”  
She’d forgotten her company. Weiss sat across the room, studying. She was stunned by the outburst, but looked up with wonder and asked, “You’re talking to me about this?”

Yang turned to Weiss. “Is that alright?”  
“Yeah!” Weiss smiled, then tempered it and tried to look serious. But not too serious. Weiss’ social discomfort always eased Yang’s. She looked absolutely giddy about being confided in.   
“Okay,” Yang sighed.  
“It’s just, I thought you would talk to Ruby about it first.”  
“No. She’s too young to understand.”  
“You would know better than me,” Weiss agreed.  
“It’s…” Yang shook her head and looked out the window again. “Why doesn’t she want me? How can you decide that before you see what a person will even become? Or is that it? Does she look at me and see some future that scares her? But if that’s it… Ugh. People are supposed to stick together, Weiss!”  
“It definitely isn’t you, Yang. You’re my favorite.”  
“Well, yeah, but you’ve never even met her, Weiss.”  
Weiss stopped nodding. She realized, dread grabbing her throat, that she had made a terrible mistake. Yang asked, “Who did you think I was… ?”  
But then she understood, and marveled once again at Weiss’ painful social skills. Weiss swallowed. Yang shook her head and looked out the window. “Yeah, I like Blake, a lot,” she admitted.  
Weiss folded her arms. “Who… Um… Who were you talking about?”  
“Raven. My biological mom.”  
“Oh.”  
Yang pulled a scrap book from under her bed, and handed Weiss the photo of team STRQ. Weiss studied the photo, taking in the faces she knew. Her eyes steeled, and Yang knew she was looking at Uncle Qrow. Then they darted over to Summer, and her eyes softened. She scanned across to Tai, and her eyes darted up to Yang’s flowing, golden locks. She glanced back down to Raven, and looked again at Yang, to the curve of her cheeks and the sharp point of her dimples.  
“She was beautiful,” Weiss said.  
“Yeah,” Yang agreed. She took the photograph back, and returned it to the scrapbook.  
Weiss pressed, “But, Yang, you… People like you, a lot. You don’t have to feel alone. Everyone wants to hang out with you. I want to hang out with you more! And, well, I mean, Blake and you.”  
“I haven’t talked to her about this.”  
“Why not? Aren’t you two… ?” Weiss nodded the implicit meaning.  
“Because… All I’m really trying to say is, if my own mother can leave me, who won’t?” She looked out the window again. Her tears caught the evening light.  
“Blake won’t leave you,” Weiss said.  
“You can’t promise that, Weiss. You never really know a person- especially someone like Blake.”  
“She might join the White Fang again,” Weiss blurted.  
Yang rolled her eyes, suddenly remembering who she was talking to. “Weiss, could you just-?”  
“-She met some at the café she took me to.”  
Yang’s breath caught. She looked at Weiss.  
“And she’s not back yet,” Weiss finished.  
Yang snarled, “And you left her there?”  
“Oh come on, Yang! I’m the heir to the Schnee dynasty. Who do you think the real target was?”  
Yang stood and gestured out the window. “She could be in danger! You should have said something!”  
She reached for her keys on the dresser.   
Weiss leaped up and covered them. “It’s a tea house in the middle of downtown, Yang. They can’t do anything there.”  
“Of course they can! They’re the White Fang!”  
“They weren’t martyrs, Yang! They were probably the Shadow Pact.”  
“The what?”  
“Oh, come on, Yang. The Shadow Pact. The White Fang’s assassins. You know all those people Blake keeps sketching in her notebook? Don’t you recognize Atlas’ most wanted? Duh. They were sitting behind me, and I didn’t notice them. Blake didn’t want me to panic, so she told me that Jaune was behind me. But when I got outside, I saw that it was actually a bunch of faunus. I kept going, because I thought that she would want it to be private, but it’s been almost half an hour now.”  
“Weiss, you could have at least called the police!”  
“Oh, GREAT IDEA, Yang!”  
Weiss held an imaginary scroll to her ear.  
“‘Hi there! This is Weiss Schnee! I just saw Blake Belladonna meeting with her old buddies in the White Fang! Please don’t expel her or anything, though!’”  
She hung up the imaginary phone and tossed it onto her bed.   
Yang huffed. “We have to go rescue her.”  
The door beeped and opened. Blake stood on the other end, and didn’t enter. Before she could talk, Weiss stepped forward and smiled pleasantly. “I hope Jaune didn’t give you too much trouble.”  
Blake looked as if she’d just had a spat with a dog. But she played into Weiss’ faux ignorance and relaxed. “Yeah. No. I told him you were busy in meetings or something,” she lied.  
“Oh, thank you. Yang and I were worried, since you took so long to-“  
Yang interrupted, “You were listening at the door.”  
Blake nodded. “Yeah.”  
Weiss pursed her lips shut.   
Blake put a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for not calling the cops.”  
“Just promise me you’ll never entertain their presence again,” Weiss said.  
“I’m done with the White Fang,” Blake promised.  
Yang stepped in and placed a hand on Blake’s shoulder. Their eyes met. She hesitated. She wiped away the tears. And Blake, in realizing, looked as if pain had wracked her heart. Weiss side-stepped her way to the door and whispered, “I’ll go,” as she left.  
Yang gripped Blake’s shoulders. Fresh tears brimmed under her eyes. “Blake.”  
Her voice shook. “Blake, just tell me that you’re okay.”  
“I’m sorry I worried you,” Blake whispered.  
She pulled Yang into a hug, where she held her in silence. They swayed, pressed against each other, while Yang’s tears ran like a river at its end. Her worries evaporated, and when she was finally ready to let go, the sun winked out on the horizon.

Their whispers were the only currents in the room. Their eyes were the brightest lights. And in each other’s arms, their auras glowed and expanded as a diamond mist.  
“You can't leave me, Blake.”  
“I can't stay next to you forever.”  
Yang held Blake’s hands. She drew her fingers inside Blake’s palms.  
“But, whenever you leave, you have to promise me that you'll come back.”  
Blake folded her hands together, and held Yang’s. She lifted Yang’s chin, and said, “I'm here with you now, Yang. That's all I can promise.”


	12. Shadowcat

Blake ‘Shadowcat’ Belladonna met eyes with the friends she’d abandoned. Five assassins of her caliber sat in human clothes around human drinks they’d bought with human money. But they had the look and the smell of the wilds in them, their fur on end and muscles taut for action. They sat like animals waiting for a threat to pass, eyes darting to every motion behind aesthetic glasses. She thought, it’s a miracle they haven’t been arrested yet.

The leader, a wolf named Umbra, was the only faunus who looked relaxed. He waved Blake to his table. Amethyst and Verdan made space for her.  
Blake shook her head.  
“Come on,” Umbra nodded.  
“No.”  
“But you'll sit with a Schnee?”  
Blake nodded. “She's my friend.”  
Umbra ran his tongue behind his gums. “Are we still friends?” he asked.  
Blake didn’t answer. Umbra nodded his acceptance, or his disappointment. He muttered to the others, “I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve lost my appetite.”  
They each cast a contemptuous glare at Blake, and stood to leave. She didn’t meet their eyes. That she’d abandoned the whole of her life hurt enough; it hurt more that her new friends would find out. And what would they think of her, if they knew she could leave them too? She would tell them why she’d left: She was a freedom fighter; but in the company of Adam Taurus, she was never free. 

Umbra stopped at her side. Instead of passing, he set a piece of paper on the table. Physical communication was outmoded, absolutely archaic, except in the Intelligence sector. He’d set a dossier on the table, a target for killing. But once had been enough for her. And twice had been too many.  
“No,” she said.  
“It’s not for you,” Umbra mumbled.  
“Don’t leave it here.”  
“It’s a hit I’m doing. I shouldn’t have dropped it like this. That’s clumsy. Anyone could come by and see that just sitting on the table you we’re at. They’d probably arrest me. They’d definitely arrest you.”  
“Damn you,” she hissed.  
“You don’t recognize the face?”  
Blake glanced at the paper. “No.”  
“The name?”  
“No.”  
“How about the job title?”  
“I don’t care who he is.”  
“I bet you do.”  
“I don’t,” she growled. “And I’m sick of your games. I’m not going to kill for the White Fang anymore. I have a life now, and I’m going to live it my way. Now get out of here, or I will call the police.” She swallowed. She tried to drink her tea, but her shaking hand rattled the cup.  
Umbra shook his head. “That’s an empty threat.”  
He pulled Weiss’ chair out and sat. Blake bristled. Umbra stopped, realizing the effect he was having. He smiled, amused. “You don’t have to be scared of me, Blake.”  
She swallowed. “Well… I am.”  
Umbra shrugged. He lifted Weiss’ napkin and sniffed her lipstick. He nudged her silverware around and tried her tea, wearing her personality, examining her strange ways. Then the act ended, and he resumed his own ego.  
“Never been this close to a Schnee,” he admitted. “Banesaw says he almost killed her on the train. Were you there?”  
Blake didn’t have a weapon on her. She was certain that Umbra had something. He wouldn’t want to be caught out and about with a Ballistic Chain Scythe; that would draw suspicion. If it came to a fight, he probably had a knife, and she had nothing.  
“We’re not after Weiss,” Umbra said.  
“I don’t think we met here by accident,” Blake answered.  
Umbra nodded. His neutral, uncomfortable expression bloomed into a friendly smile.  
“We care about you,” he said. “It’s been a while since we touched bases.”  
“Adam sent you.”  
Umbra shook his head. “We’re not working for Adam. We’re working for a human.”  
Blake had balled her fists. They relaxed now, in shock. “Don’t tell me. Roman Torchwick?”  
Umbra nodded. “Heard of him? He was throwing a lot of hits our way. Mostly just cleaning house. But it’s not clear what the big picture is. Anyway, Tukson slipped under our nose, but-”  
The name clicked in her mind. Blake blurted, “What?” She’d been at the crime scene, the day after. Tukson’s Book Trade.  
Umbra leaned back, repulsed by her ignorance. “Tukson. You’ve gotta remember. You’re killin’ me, Blake.”  
“That was Tukson? Like, from Chernobyl?”  
“One and the same,” Umbra nodded, “So Tukson slipped under our noses. But then Roman Torchwick handed me that dossier.” He pointed to it, tempting her from the center of the table. “And I figured now was a good time to catch up.”

Umbra was lying about something. The years of their relationship told Blake something was off. But what? Umbra put a hand on the dossier and slid it into her lap.  
“Just read his crimes,” Umbra begged.  
So Blake looked into her lap. Feeling the paper gave her a rush of the familiar. She remembered nights spent at the camp fire evaluating hits and selecting priorities with her friends. The paper only covered the basics.

Who: Noir Soleil. Former Retinue Service. Former Ambassadorial Service. Active Atlas Intelligence.

What: No strategic value  
When and Where: Goes for a walk every night at sunset. Same route. Outlined in figure 2.

Why: Chernobyl.

Blake wanted to set this down and go have fun with team RWBY. But a part of her was still Shadowcat. And Shadowcat wanted to finish her work.  
“You don’t have to do anything,” Umbra said.  
She looked up from the paper. “You don’t want me to kill him?”  
“Personally, I want to kill him. I think everyone feels the same way,” Umbra smiled. “Even the humans. A Specialist gave me this intel.”  
“It’s a trap,” Blake blurted.  
“Oh, definitely. But they used him as bait.”  
She looked at the picture again, taking in the face of evil.   
“You don’t want me to do anything?” she asked.  
“We all thought you should get first pick. You know, since you… The point is, if you don’t want it, I still just wanted you to know. He’s gonna be dead soon, Blake. It’s almost over.”  
Shadowcat smiled, her hatred stoked, but never sated. Blake had to correct that smile, to remind herself of the truths she’d learned. “It’s a cycle, Umbra. It never ends. Not by your means.”  
Umbra nodded, but he didn’t leave. She knew he didn’t have what he wanted yet. She knew he wouldn’t leave until he did. So she folded the paper and secured it in her pocket.   
Umbra nodded and stood. “We’re starting at the Crow Bar. Two days from now, six in the afternoon. See you there?”  
“I’ll be supporting my teammates in the doubles round of the tournament,” she said. “So, sorry.”  
Umbra shrugged.  
“We’ll wait. Three days from now, same time.”  
She didn’t answer. Umbra laughed and left.


	13. Lore

Few know what it means to be truly quiet. But Blake Belladonna had learned and embraced the gift of her petite frame at a young age. She and silence were twins. She stood in professor Oobleck’s office and watched him work. He hadn’t noticed her enter. Minutes later, Oobleck finally looked up from his desk and startled.

He said, “Really? Again? Miss Belladonna, if you are trying to impress me… It’s working.”  
Blake blushed and held out her assignment.  
“You promised extra credit for a summary of Third Crusade.”  
“I did? Ah. Yes. I remember now.”  
Oobleck seized the assignment and flipped it open. His eyes skimmed every page like a mechanized loom, his finger flipping through leaves every few seconds. Blake stood in awe. She’d expected to hand it over and leave. She’d expected that Doctor Oobleck wouldn’t actually care what some sixteen year old girl thought of a banned book. She especially didn’t think that he would, or could, review her entire essay in a minute.

While he read, she grew too nervous to wait. “Professor Oobleck? Doctor? I… You didn’t offer this assignment to anyone else. And… I mean, it’s a banned book.”  
He looked up from the essay. “Yes? I can see that you’re very distressed. Very, indeed. Why?”  
“Well, I was in the White Fang. Third Crusade is the book that the White Fang distributes to recruit people. It’s supposed to fill you with radical ideas and revolutionary zeal. Shouldn’t you be telling me to not think about this stuff?”  
She swallowed her fear. To the extent that she could, she’d learned to trust her professors.   
Oobleck chuckled. “Thinking never did anyone wrong.”  
“But this is extremist literature. That’s why the book was banned. Because it’s full of dangerous thoughts.”  
Oobleck had frowned before. At her words, his frown soured.  
“Miss Belladonna. There are many thoughts. Only one is dangerous. Never think that you are done thinking, that you’ve reached the time for action, and will never need to return to the abstract again. That thought is wrong. Always. It causes all bad decisions. It causes extremism.”  
“Oh,” she said.  
He looked back to the paper, finished reading it, and set it on his desk.   
“Excellent. Very astute observations, Miss Belladonna. You understand the work very well. Not in its context. But otherwise, what I expected.” He looked to her for an answer.  
“I guess I do,” Blake admitted.  
She hoped that was enough. She raised her eyebrows as if to ask, “My grade?”  
Oobleck looked back to the essay and frowned.  
“You failed to mention the first Crusade. Even once. Why? Perhaps you don’t know. Interesting. That would explain your misunderstanding of the terms ‘Fate’ and ‘Destiny’ in the author’s context.” He glared at her.  
“Uh…” she said.  
But the professor waited for something better. She thought aloud, “Aren’t Fate and Destiny the same thing?”  
“No. Destiny, you chose for yourself. Fate is beyond your power. The difference is the causal power. The author describes the world two ways. In one, The Will creates the world. In the other, the world creates people and their egos. The author seeks to convince faunus kind that their choice to rise up will create a new world for them. He sees Fate as an oppressor that can be overthrown.”  
She tried to absorb that knowledge. She wanted to leave. She wanted her grade. “O-okay. So… The other thing you said was… I didn’t talk about the other Crusades. I know there were three crusades, but-“”  
“Two,” Oobleck corrected.  
Blake hugged herself and shifted her weight. “Two?”  
“Yes.”  
“But, Professor, in Third Crusade, the author says that the third crusade, of faunus reclaiming their place, was to make up for the second crusade, when humanity subjugated the faunus. Doesn’t he mean the Great War?”  
“The Great War was fought over the rights of the individual against the collective. Race was not a factor. Faunus units featured on both sides. The second crusade is metaphorical. The author is referring to the more than coincidental shift of power out of faunus hands and into human hands within society before, during, and after the Great War. Purely conceptual. There are very rarely instances of violence in that campaign.”  
“Oh,” she mumbled.  
Oobleck waited.   
Blake asked, “But there’s no book called First Crusade.”  
She realized her blunder as the words left her mouth.  
“Crusade,” she sighed.  
“You understand now?”  
Blake thought it through, then repeated aloud.  
“I know Crusade is an old holy book. I didn’t realize it was about the First Crusade. I thought I was looking for a book called First Crusade. But… Well they wouldn’t have called it that, would they? But I only forgot about it because the only people who still read it are... Well, The Special Retinue Service in Atlas.”  
“Your enemies,” Oobleck nodded.  
“You want me to study my… The people I used to shoot at?”  
“Yes. You must understand the differences that drove you to violence. You chose to leave the White Fang. Why?”  
She opened her mouth to answer.   
He interrupted. “Rhetorical. Please don’t say. Perhaps a change in ideology? Perhaps you defected from its vices. In either case, you must understand the ideological roots of your conflict. What drives the belligerence of a soldier from Atlas? You must wonder. And so you must discover.”  
He was quiet long enough for her to say, “O-okay. But… Race. We’re faunus, and they’re human. And humans hate faunus. That’s why the White Fang and the soldiers of the Old World are at war.”  
Oobleck retracted from that. He had a coy smile. “Oh! Well then. History is solved. I should find a new profession.”  
But he didn’t pack his bags. Blake sighed.   
Oobleck ended his facetiousness there and took a long gulp of coffee from his thermos. “Ahhhh. There. No, Miss Belladonna. The world is not so simple. Perhaps you’ve forgotten Chernobyl. Those atrocities. Well… A faunus, you know the name- Tukson- made them possible. And often the White Fang relies upon human alliances. As you’ve noted.”  
Blake understood what he meant. “Like Roman Torchwick.”  
“Who?”   
“Well, you know how Team RWBY has been in the news a lot lately? We kind of busted a lot of White fang operations at the docks. And there was this mobster named-“  
“Oh. Yes. Sorry. Continue.”  
Blake nodded. She thought Oobleck’s counter-points over in her head. She didn’t have a historical narrative that accounted for them. She looked at her essay on the table.  
“So… Do I get the extra credit?”  
“What? Yes. Excellent work. That should bring your grade up to a B. I’d like to offer you another special assignment, Miss Belladonna.”  
“Book report on Crusade?”  
“Yes.”  
“Slight problem, Doctor Oobleck.”  
“What?”  
“Crusade is a banned book, too. And… I’ve never read it before. So…”  
She trailed off the sentence so he could provide the answer.   
He blinked at her. “Ah! Yes. Not to worry. It was on the shelf above Third Crusade.”  
Blake felt the truth creeping on her: She’d been caught.  
“On the… I’m not sure what you mean, Professor.” She took a step toward the door.  
Oobleck set his work aside. He steepled his hands at his desk’s center and gave her his full, shoulders-squared attention. Slowly, slower than he usually spoke, he hummed, “You are a very clever young girl, Miss Belladonna. But I am much older and much wiser than you. I know that you broke into the banned books archive and stole the fifth edition copy of First Crusade. You were also very meticulous about returning it every night.”  
Blake swallowed. She had to run. She refreshed her mind on the escape routes she’d planned. Her nearest bug-out bag was stashed at the tool shed in the public gardens. She could change colors there and use the pre-paid transit passes to make it as far as the wall. She saw that Oobleck’s expression had changed. Before, he’d been menacing, now he looked worried.  
“Oh. Miss Belladonna, you are not in trouble.”  
She breathed.  
Oobleck laughed. “Ha! Goodness. I wouldn’t dream of punishing an inquisitive mind. Haha! Did you think that-? Ha! It doesn’t bear mentioning. But please, you must indulge me and ask how I caught you.”  
Blake felt dizzy. She sat in the guest chair and straightened her school uniform.  
“Professor, I can’t… I’m sure no one saw me. I…”  
“No one saw you,” he smiled.  
“Then… How?”  
She saw his smile broaden. Oobleck pushed the essay to her and tapped the title.  
“I wrote the fifth edition. And I published only one copy. Directly to the Archive. When I gave you the assignment.”


	14. Party

Team RWBY walked down Beacon’s hallways. Weiss jumped ahead and addressed everyone. “Ruby, I think you should be the one to knock on the door. As Team Leader, you really bring a pleasant enthusiasm to our group that will go over well during introductions. Make sure you shake hands with Coco first, since she’s their team leader.”  
Ruby recognized Weiss' social anxiety manifesting as bossiness. In these situations, she'd learned to say, “Okay, Weiss.”  
Weiss turned to Blake, who interrupted, “Let me guess... The back?”  
“You never smile!” Weiss strained.  
Blake forced a sigh. “We’re here to relax. It's not a networking event.”  
“Everything is a networking event,” Weiss huffed.  
Yang smirked, “Yeah, we gotta figure out where all the other parties are.”  
Ruby tugged Yang’s arm. “Hey, Sis? We can hang out all party, right?”  
Yang kept her smile, though it was strained. “Yeaaaahh. I was thinking we would actually not, Ruby. You’ve gotta meet more people from other teams.”  
Weiss clasped her hands in pleading. “Ruby. Girls. This is the first time another team has invited us to a party! They’re cooler and older than us! Just... Don't mess it up, okay?”

Down the hallway, Team JNPR stepped out of their room and walked the same direction. Weiss hurried up to them and caught Pyrrha Nikkos’ attention. “We’re on our way to Team CFVY’s event. Were you invited, too?”  
Team JNPR stopped and turned to Jaune Arc, their leader.  
He asked, “Is it invitation only?”  
Nora Valkyrie shouted, “Of course not! It’s a dorm party!”  
Beside her, Lie Ren murmured, “Nora. Inside voice.”  
Pyrrha Nikkos put a hand on Weiss. She smiled, and the smile spread like a miracle, until everyone, especially Weiss, was giggling at her anxiety.  
Weiss blushed. “S-sorry, Pyrrha. I just…”  
“Oh, I know. We’re both famous, Weiss. But it’s just a few Beacon teams at this party. I think we’re among friends today. So, we won’t have to perform.”  
There were many traits to praise about Pyrrha Nikkos. She kept herself immaculate, grooming a waist-length mane of brilliant red hair. She was often stared at for her beauty, feared for her perfect tournament record, universally praised as an athlete, and adored by teachers for her scholastic record. Despite these accomplishments, kindness was her signature.  
The sweetness of her voice, and the sincerity of her friendship, carried them onward with light hearts. 

They stopped at Team CFVY’s door. The music inside shook beyond the threshold. Ruby slapped the keypad and the door slid open to reveal a wall of beads.

Ruby squealed with delight and sprinted through. Jaune, more cautiously, stepped through and commented, “Hey, neat.”  
Their teams followed and quickly filled the room. Coco had brewed coffee and spice to scent the space. She relaxed on her beanbag with an espresso shot. She scooted over as Ren and Nora sat with her. Velvet had been busy preening her rabbit ears when Blake entered. Spotting another faunus, she flexed her nose as a question. Blake flared her eyes and nodded in agreement. They sat together, and Blake commented quieter than the music. “It’s not a subtle flavor.”  
Velvet shrugged. “Coco says she won’t negotiate on the coffee. Sorry.”  
Blake smiled. “They’re human. What can ya’ do?”  
Velvet laughed as a trained response. Then she realized, “Wait. Was that a race joke? Was that a terrorism joke?”  
Blake held a finger to her lips and smiled far more deviously.  
Ruby Rose, meanwhile, had found the most awesome place to sit, just beside the giant, Yatsuhashi. He sat cross-legged in the room’s center, deep in meditation despite the reverberating bass.  
Jaune sat across from Yatsuhashi and said, “Hey, Ruby.”  
She chimed, “Hey, Jaune. How’s the team doing?”  
“Pretty well. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this whole leadership thing.”  
“Yeah, me too,” Ruby hummed.  
Their conversation died there. Yatsuhashi meditated.  
Ruby tried, “Do you think there will be cookies?”  
Jaune craned his neck around, lingered as he saw Weiss sitting beside Pyrrha, then turned back and shook his head.  
Ruby nodded to her teammate. “No luck with Weiss, yet?”  
Jaune scratched the back of his head. “Not… Yet.”  
He sighed and collapsed, looking defeated. Ruby rocked back and forth, short on ideas for fun. “Well,” she encouraged, “at least Weiss and Pyrrha are getting along well.”

Weiss sat upright, carefully choosing which names to drop, timing her social maneuvers, and trying to mimic Pyrrha’s manners. She was having trouble keeping this much focus and maintaining the topic.  
Pyrrha shrugged and turned her palms up. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t be any more blunt. And it makes me wonder, am I unclear when I communicate?”  
Weiss nodded. “Yeah, Pyrrha. You get your… I mean, no. I’m never really confused about what you’re talking about. Except, just now, I kind of lost you. You were talking about Jaune, right?”  
Weiss tried to keep smiling and look involved so Pyrrha wouldn’t think she was insane. Pyrrha’s smile dimmed to worry.

Later that night, Team RWBY returned to their dorm. Blake quietly curled up in bed with a book. Yang paced in the room’s center, energized by the fun. Ruby yawned and retrieved her bestiary for homework. Weiss locked the door behind her, heaved a breath of relief, and groaned.  
“Ugh. I hope the rest of you had a good showing, because I made a fool of myself. Pyrrha is never going to talk to me again. Blake, I saw you talking to Velvet. Did you… ?”  
Weiss trailed off as she realized what Blake was reading.  
She pointed. “Where did you get that?”  
“I stole it,” Blake hummed.  
Yang stopped her pacing and read the title. Commentaries on Crusade.  
Weiss turned to Yang. “I don’t think she’s just leading me on this time,” she whispered.  
Yang sighed. “Blake? Did you really steal that?”  
Ruby answered for her. “Yeah. But it’s okay, because Doctor Oobleck told her to.”  
“It’s just a book,” Yang noted.  
“It’s Commentaries on Crusade,” Weiss corrected, “Which is almost as bad as having a copy of Third Crusade.”  
Blake, without looking, pulled an old copy from under her mattress and showed Weiss.  
“Wow. Okay. Still, it’s not as if you have a copy of Crusade.”  
Blake looked up from her reading to glare.  
“Oh no,” Weiss realized.  
Blake returned to reading.  
Yang shrugged. “So she’s got some banned books.”  
“Yang, the only people who are allowed to have copies of those books are the Special Retinue Service and the Archives Office.”  
“And the School,” Ruby noted.  
“Also a handful of independent academies,” Blake mumbled.  
“So it’s just one of those little rule things we’re always breaking,” Yang shrugged. She sat beside Blake.  
Weiss sat on her own bed and sighed. “I guess so,” she relented.  
Yang laid down beside Blake and rested her head on her shoulder, on the pretext of reading along. She felt the comfort of skin contact, and listened intently to her breathing.  
Weiss found her own bed and threw herself onto the pillow.  
She snapped, “Well? You’re putting us all at risk by taking it here, Blake, so you might as well read out loud.” She didn’t look at them.  
Blake glanced across the room, then turned down into Yang’s eyes, to frown her disapproval. Yang smiled and whispered, “She doesn’t want to admit she wants you to read to her.”  
Blake looked confused. But she shrugged and read aloud.  
“Unlike common pre-Crusade stories, The Girl is not a symbol of purity as virtue. The Girl’s purity only matters in the narrative to her utility as a sacrifice. Aside from this technicality, careful readers will note that Desecration of the Tower shares much of its symbolism with the story The Girl in the Tower. Both stories share the same cast and the same conflict. The Girl, the Two Crusaders, and the Two Prisoners (or, “The Guilty Spark which catalyzes transformation” in DoT 3:43). However, the roles and outcomes differ wildly. For example, the Crusader with Power Over Life is antagonized by the Crusader with Power Over Death in the Desecration of the Tower. Whereas in The Girl in the Tower, they work together against The Agent and his desecration.”  
“-UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,” Ruby summarized.  
Blake stopped there. She’d made her point: The book was banned to protect children from boredom.  
Yang found it more interesting. She frowned. “The Girl in the Tower. That’s a children’s story.”  
Blake whispered, “Oh. I was raised with The Desecration of the Tower.”  
Together, they asked, “What’s yours about?”  
They laughed.  
Ruby looked away from her studies, to watch them. She was old enough to realize something unusual was happening in that bed. She looked down at Weiss, to see if it was just her. But Weiss had curled up with a pillow and clutched her apple necklace. She looked unhappy, or asleep. It was hard to tell in the darkness.

Yang and Blake’s giggles continued.  
“Okay. Okay, I’ll go first,” Yang offered. “The Girl in the tower is basically a princess. She’s just turned sixteen, so…” Yang eyed the meaning.  
Blake smirked, “Like us.”  
Yang blushed. “Uh. Y-yeah. Well she gets kidnapped by a Grimm Dragon! He takes her to the top of a distant tower. Two Crusaders decided to rescue her, but they each wanted to reach her first. One had the power of life. The other had the power of Death. Each took with him a manservant who owed them a life debt. The Crusader with power over life rescued the girl from the dragon and freed his manservant. And they lived happily ever after. Or at least, that’s the short version.”  
Ruby asked, “Hey, Yang? How come everybody’s a guy in this story?”  
Yang guessed, “Well, it was before the Great War. Uncle Qrow said there used to be just as many guys as girls.”  
Blake smirked. “No way. Guys are, like, an eighth of the population.”  
Yang shrugged. “I dunno. How’s your story go?”

Blake saved her spot in the book and folded it closed.  
“I think it starts with a tower. Salem is standing atop a tower and performs a ritual that turns the sun black.”  
Ruby and Yang asked, “Who?”  
Blake hesitated. “Um… Salem? You know when you’re near Grimm, or just, in general when you’re really involved in the struggle and there’s that voice opposing you? Like, friction to your optimism, telling you that you’ll fail, that you’ll never be anything. That voice is Salem.”  
“Oh. Okay.”  
“So Salem turns the sun black. The Queen of the Hunt climbs the human tower to change the sun back to normal. The human crusaders try to stop her. So she binds the souls of the dead and forces them to fight for her. She climbs the tower and sacrifices herself, and the sun rises again for another day.”  
Yang waited a beat, then asked, “And they all lived… ?”  
Blake shook her head. “It’s supposed to happen in a cycle, like the seasons.”  
Ruby asked, “But… Wait, who’s the hero?”  
“Well, the Queen of the Hunt. Because she brings back the sun and opposes Salem.”  
“But she dies,” Ruby corrected.  
Blake thought about it, then asserted, “Yeah. Heroes die.”  
Ruby didn’t like this conversation. She looked down to Weiss, who lay as before, curled up with herself, eyes watering, hand trembling as she gripped the apple charm on her necklace.


	15. Ozluminati

Force Specialist Winter Schnee vectored like a bull across Beacon’s courtyard. Civilians evacuated her path. The pillars encircling this plaza had supported Vale’s first colosseum, three-thousand years ago. Now, they were decorative, a memento to the academy’s legacy. In the sky above her hung the new colosseum, a flying rock with the same square meterage as the school. Its spires and turrets overshadowed even Vale’s CCT Tower.  
Winter crossed into the CCT’s marble foyer and stopped at the elevators. Her secondary, Agent Hikari Oni, stopped beside her. Winter’s White uniform, beside Hikari’s Black, drew curious glances from Vale’s citizens. That, and they were sharp young women in their prime.  
Winter summoned the elevator, then glanced to her soldier. It was easy to forget that Hikari was fifty years her senior. Modern medicine and constant exercise kept her twenty.   
They had worked together long enough for Winter to sense tension.  
Hikari was staring through the elevator and past the horizon. She had seen one of these towers, the icons of civilization, overrun by forces of evil. Winter had only heard stories of Mountain Glenn, of her cousin Apple’s demise. Hikari had been there.   
Winter softened her voice, but ordered, “Something’s on your mind, Agent.”  
Hikari’s eyes focused. She swallowed, then drawled, “I hope you didn’t bring me just to carry your folders, Specialist.”  
Winter nodded. “General Ironwood wants a report on our progress. He wants this report in Ozpin’s office. We can assume that Headmaster Ozpin and his assistant, Miss Goodwitch, will be there.”  
It was a subtle expression, but a dimple formed on Hikari’s cheek. “We’re meeting the Ozluminati.”  
Winter nodded. “Quite. Remember what Doctor Oobleck said to us?”  
“The story of the Four Maidens?”  
“Yes. I’m starting to suspect that we’ve interpreted his words wrongly.”  
“How’s that?”  
“I believe he meant for us to take him literally, Hikari.”  
Hikari’s dimple vanished. She looked concerned. “Are you going to say that in your presentation?”  
“I am going to make some unorthodox statements, yes. I want you here as a second set of eyes.”  
“What am I looking for?”  
“The General has more information than he’s giving us. Likely, Headmaster Ozpin and Miss Goodwitch do as well. I’m going to provoke them. I want you to read their reactions.”  
“I’ll stay alert.”  
“And say nothing of Noir Soleil or Blake Belladonna.”  
The elevator door opened, and they stepped inside. When the doors closed, Hikari began, “About that-“  
“-the elevators are bugged,” Winter snapped.  
The elevator rose, and the sun fell, sharpening Mountain Glenn’s range on the horizon.   
Winter had to ask. “What was it like?”  
Hikari swallowed while she thought. “Surreal.”   
“And the Grimm with aura?”   
“I know what I saw.”  
“And Apple? Why did she jump?”  
“No idea.”  
“You found her. You put her on the bullhead. She never said anything?”  
“She was in shock. And on the bullhead, she was closer to Captain Gray. Fleet Commander Gray.”  
Their silence was long. The ride was longer.  
“I’m sorry,” Hikari said.  
The doors opened for Ozpin’s office, and Winter’s gut told her she’d walked into a trap. Ozpin, Ironwood, and Glynda were waiting for her. She’d expected them. She’d expected Qrow’s absence. She had not expected Noir Soleil’s presence. That vicious old man stood like a bird perched over his cane, a direct glare like a spear holding her at bay.  
Winter and Hikari crossed the room, passing the giant clockwork aesthetic defining the office’s north side. Hikari’s boots made muted thumps. Winter’s heels clacked in time with the clockwork. They stopped and saluted at Ozpin’s desk.   
Ironwood relieved them. “Specialist Winter, this is Headmaster Ozpin of Beacon Academy, and his assistant Glynda Goodwitch. You might recognize Noir Soleil from the State Department. He served as Ambassador to Mountain Glenn, but is currently working at the Intelligence Bureau. You can consider everyone in this room to have full clearance.”  
Winter waited for a respectful beat, then asked, “Should I begin my presentation, Sir?”  
“Please.”  
“Mountain Glenn was no accident. We have extensive evidence of sabotage in primary and secondary defenses, including structural compromises of the wall and of the shield generators, disruptions in the emergency alert systems, and the twenty minute outage of surveillance equipment which allowed the Grimm swarm to skip so close to the city.”  
Winter held out her hand. Hikari gave her a folder.  
“Our prime suspects were Doctor Merlot and ‘The Woman in Red.’ We are fairly certain the Merlot family did not engineer their own deaths. They were caught off guard by the Grimm assault. Doctor Merlot, himself, appeared unhappy with that outcome in his testimony- before his disappearance. We were never able to tie him to a conspiracy to destroy the city. That leaves the Woman in Red.”  
Winter scattered the folder’s contents on the desk. A series of photographs, blurry, pixelated, showed three huntresses battling in the CCT subnode’s foyer.   
Winter pointed. “Note the time stamps on these photos. These are from the evacuation.”  
Noir Soleil retrieved glasses from his coat and examined the pictures, the three huntresses. He grunted, “Which one’s which?”  
Winter pointed to a huntress in a white cape. “We believe this is Summer Rose.”  
She pointed to a red and black kimono. “This is Blackbird.”  
She nodded to Glynda and Ozpin, translating, “Raven Branwen.”  
She pointed to the third huntress: a red, thigh length dress with gold inlays. “And this is The Woman in Red.”  
Ozpin leaned forward, examining the image closer. “And who is the young girl hiding under the table?”   
Glynda, Soleil, and Ironwood all leaned in closer to see the detail.  
“Well spotted,” Ironwood nodded. He looked to Winter.  
She answered, “Apple Schnee.”  
That drew a quick glance from Soleil and Ozpin.   
Glynda tilted her head at the photographs. “The angle is too low for security cameras.”  
Winter gestured to her side. “These are still frames taken from Agent Hikari’s shoulder camera.”  
Hikari was honored with her own glance, from everyone. Soleil nodded and smiled. The Huntsmen looked more serious. They were accustomed to the status of gods in combat. It was difficult to imagine a mere human wading into that fight and walking out with the prize. But killing huntsmen was the Retinue’s job. Hikari stayed at attention.  
Ozpin cleared his throat. “Specialist. Have we questioned Miss Branwen?”  
“Blackbird went rogue, Headmaster. We haven’t had the opportunity.”  
Noir pointed to the photo. “And Summer Rose?”  
Ozpin murmured, “Deceased.”  
Glynda offered, “And Apple Schnee?”  
“She’s dead,” Winter snapped.  
She hadn’t said it before. She hadn’t expected it to be so painful. She had sensed, for an instant, that she was unravelling. She swallowed, and regained her composure.   
Glynda nodded. “I’m sorry to hear that.”  
Noir was busy with another photograph. Agent Hikari clearly had Apple in her hands.   
He glared at her. “I don’t understand. Did you rescue her, or not?”  
“She was never evacuated.”  
“So we’ve just got you.”  
“And I have no memory of the Woman in Red’s face.”  
“That’s fair,” Ozpin hummed.  
He pointed to each huntress. “Summer has a hood, Raven has a bone helmet, and while we can’t see her face from this angle, it seems that our Woman in Red is wearing a mask.”  
Ironwood asked, “Is this all you have?”  
Winter and Hikari exchanged a glance. He’d said “you,” not “we.”  
Winter held out a hand for the next file. “The Woman in Red leaves a trail. We’re not sure how to describe it, but one of my team members is an aspiring scientist. He has a machine that detects it. We’ve been able to associate her with several objects and locations.”  
She laid out a photograph.  
“Summer’s cape,” Ozpin said.  
Winter laid out another. “Note the White Fang markings on the side of this VTOL craft. Vale Aeronautics Bullhead, Dual-Rotor. It was repossessed by local authorities when it was destroyed in a battle at Vale’s docks, several months ago. We believe the Woman in Red was standing in the port side-door and… doing whatever leaves her trail.”  
“Her… Trail…” Glynda said.  
“It’s a persistent phenomena of anomalous Dust behavior and extreme electromagnetics.”  
“Elect… What?”  
“Electromagnetism, Ma’am. It is a relatively new field in physics that unifies our understanding of magnets and lightning. It has very little practical application. But it is easily detectable. We believe the Woman in Red leaves persistent phenomena whenever she engages in combat.”  
Glynda glanced down at the photograph. Her pupils dilated and she looked to Ozpin.   
She said, “The night we found Ruby.”  
He raised an eyebrow. They both looked back at Winter. They looked impressed. Winter laid out five more photographs.  
“These are from a field two-hundred miles north-east of Vale, near the ruins of Ditch. The town was destroyed. A battle occurred in the field the day after. The Woman in Red was in both of those locations. From the field, we recovered two items.”   
She laid out another picture. “A glass slipper.”  
She laid out the last picture. “And an apple. It has not expired after thirty days. It does not rot, bruise, age, or lose its ripe smell. We have no idea what to make of this.”  
Noir didn’t bat an eye. Ironwood, Ozpin, and Glynda had the knowing look of gamblers hiding their hands.   
Ironwood asked, “What lead you to that field?”  
“We were tracking Blackbird.”  
She nodded to Soleil, “To question her. We believe she was tracking Qrow Branwen. We believe he was on his way to meet a woman named Amber. She’s gone missing.”  
Ozpin steepled his hands and rested his mouth behind them. Glynda shifted her weight towards Ironwood, glanced his way, and cleared her throat. Ironwood stood straighter. They knew damn well where Amber was.  
Ozpin spoke from behind his hands. “Per-sis-tent, Electro-magnetic, Phe-nom-ena. Persistence is not normal of magnetism or lightning.”  
Winter nodded. “Well said, Headmaster.”  
“Is that all of the evidence you’ve gathered?”  
“Yes, Headmaster.”  
Ozpin turned. “And Noir, your office has received all of this?”  
Noir nodded.  
“Thank you for your time then, Mister Soleil,” Ozpin dismissed.  
Noir understood to leave. When the elevator closed him out, Ozpin lowered his steepeled hands and leaned forward.  
“Agent… Hikari, was it? If I know soldiers, you have found a much shorter, informal name for this persistent electromagnetic phenomena.”  
Hikari looked to Winter. Winter nodded a mere centimeter.  
Hikari nodded. “Yes.”  
“What do you call it?”  
“Magic.”  
“And what do you call The Woman in Red?”  
Winter answered, “We call her the Fall Maiden.”  
Ozpin smiled. He looked to Ironwood. “I’m rather happy with this progress.”  
Ironwood nodded. “As am I. Specialist, take my word for this: Amber is a dead end. Focus on identifying and neutralizing Blackbird and the Woman in Red.” He looked to Glynda and Ozpin. “Is that all the questions we have?”  
No one answered. Hikari gathered up the photographs, and Ironwood dismissed them. The elevator ride down was long and quiet. Hikari scribbled notes onto her scroll. Winter stared at Mountain Glenn. Out in the courtyard, as they crossed under the shadow of the tower, Hikari stopped. Winter turned to watch her.  
“Agent?”  
“Specialist. You should listen to this.”  
Winter stepped closer. Hikari switched on her scroll’s speakers.  
Ironwood’s voice grumbled, “She’s not close enough. We have to act now.”  
Glynda shouted at him, “She has at least three days, James! We know nothing will happen until at least the finals round of the tournament. Give them three days! Then we can discuss it.”  
“Why?! The whole of Vale is at risk here, Glynda!”  
Ozpin murmured, “Qrow. You don’t have to hide behind that pillar anymore.”  
Winter heard his footsteps, the harsh, steel-rimmed boots clicking on tile. She heard him scratch his beard, and she remembered the rough texture.   
She clenched her fists. “Hikari?”  
“Specialist?”  
“Why can I hear what they’re saying?”  
“Because I bugged his desk, Specialist.”  
Winter could not clench her fists hard enough.   
She shook. “You… What?”   
Hikari muted the audio.  
Winter hissed, “You have been questioning every decision I have made for two straight years, Agent! You point to the line every time we get near it, and now you do this?! You’ve just committed espionage against Vale’s Head of State! It’s a violation of our military treaties with Vale!”  
She saw Hikari’s dimple of levity form again. “The Retinue isn’t in Atlas’ military, Specialist. Not yet, anyway. We answer to the Crown of Mantle.”  
“Mantle is defunct! There hasn’t been a Monarch for two-hundred years! You answer to the regent, and the regency belongs to General Iron-“ She realized, shocked, what had happened.  
“Hikari? Did the General-“  
“-There’s a policy in the military that I’m pretty fond of, Winter. Don’t ask; Don’t tell.”  
Hikari winked, and unmuted the audio.  
Qrow had turned angry. “I’m with Glynda. Give Winter a chance to set this right. Sacrificing Amber is a last resort. If we kill the Woman in Red, Amber gets her soul back and might make a full recovery.”  
Ironwood pounded the table. “She’s missing half her soul! Every minute she lives is a miracle that we don’t even understand! She could relapse at any moment! And when she dies, not if, The Woman in Red receives the full powers of the Fall Maiden. The Equinox hits in three days. Meanwhile, Qrow was too drunk to remember what our suspect even looks like.”  
“I wasn’t drunk. I was hallucinating.”  
“That’s an irrelevant distinction, Branwen.”  
“No. It isn’t. She has a way to hide her face. It might be a semblance.”  
“Regardless! We don’t know who we’re looking for. Time is against us. I have ten-thousand marines ready to lay down their lives for Vale, and if Amber was any one of them, we wouldn’t be debating this. You have to pick someone, Ozpin. We have to kill Amber and put her soul into a new maiden. It’s the only way to keep the powers safe.”  
That brought a silence.  
Hikari looked up at Winter, mouth hanging open in disbelief. She mouthed, “What the-“  
In the office, Glynda whispered. “How much of your heart did they replace with Iron?”  
Ozpin made his decision. “I already have someone in mind. Pyrrha Nikos. But I agree with Glynda and Qrow. Amber has… Winter has three days. Qrow? What are you looking at?”  
“They’re watching us.”  
Glynda’s heels clicked away from the microphone, to Qrow’s side.  
“They’re just standing in the courtyard, Qrow. You’re paranoid.”  
“No. I know when I’m being watched.”  
Winter slid Hikari’s scroll closed and strode away.


	16. The Woman in Red

Pyrrha Nikkos slipped out of her clothes and looked at herself in the mirror. She smiled. Looking good is feeling good.   
Through the bathroom door, Jaune asked, “Pyrrha? Are my socks in there?”  
“No. But tell Nora she left her hair iron on the counter again.”  
“I’ll tell Ren. Whenever I scold her, she just challenges me to a race. And she runs really fast, so…”  
Pyrrha giggled at the image.  
Jaune made rummaging sounds around the room, grunting as he went prone to search under his bunk. Nora and Ren were out for another hour. She wondered what Jaune would think if she surprised him like this, totally naked. Hypothetically.  
Jaune shouted, “Hey, Pyrrha? Do you think Weiss gets a lot of cards? Like for holidays?”  
Pyrrha frowned.  
Jaune continued, “I’ve been thinking maybe I can get her attention if I do something unusual. Like, people don’t usually notice what’s right in front of them all the time, right? Not unless you do something drastic.”  
She hummed, “I dunno, Jaune. You already wore a dress to the dance.”  
“Yeah, but that was for you. And we totally stole the show.”  
She smiled. Her heart beat triple time. Did he mean… ? The hope confused her. She reminded herself that Jaune was her team leader. He knew better than to fraternize. She ought to know better, too.  
But the fact remained that she had unrequited feelings. And if Jaune stopped being dazzled by Weiss Schnee’s fame for a moment, he might notice what was right in front of him.  
Pyrrha looked down and folded her hands. This was her problem, not Jaune’s. She needed to address it, and in private. She’d hung a white robe on the door, and slipped into it now.   
She needed time alone. So she wandered her way to the temple on the cliffs. Athena Polis was not the best idol for her troubles, but the temple was always open and empty.  
Pyrrha stopped in the chapel’s entrance.  
Three students had skewed the pews, to make room for a folding table. Pyrrha recognized Mercury Black. She’d sparred against him before the tournament began. This was a foreign team. Mistralite, like her. Mercury had his feet on the table, and was staring at the ceiling rafters. With him were two girls. One, in red, was inspecting her nails. The other, in green, was reading a magazine.  
Mercury looked to green, and asked, “What do you have there, Emerald?”  
Pyrrha closed the door silently, not wanting to interrupt the strangers as they’d interrupted her. Emerald lifted the magazine above the table and asked, “Merc, would you say that I'm 'Approachable and sincere in my day to day life?' It's really important. I'm trying to fill out this dateability quiz."  
Mercury grunted, “Nope.”  
Pyrrha met eyes with the third girl. A black bang covered one eye, but the other was cast from molten bronze. She had a gaze like a bird of prey.  
She watched Pyrrha quietly, gave no warning to her friends, and made no introduction.  
Pyrrha nodded her thanks. This was a chapel, after all. She hoped they would recognize her robes, those of Athenian Supplicants, and let her be.  
She aligned herself to the isle, and approached the altar in the methodical way of pilgrims, stopping every step to utter mantras.  
Emerald’s voice filled the hall again. “How about you, Cinder?”  
Cinder answered, “I think you’re a doll, Em.”  
Emerald scribbled her answer on the magazine, sighing away her frustration, calculating if she was destined to marry a Schnee or a Beowolf. 

Pyrrrha walked softly. Barefoot, she made almost no noise on the floor. She kept her eyes dead ahead on her rites, trying not to disturb the party as much as they disturbed her.

Mercury asked, “Does your quiz ask about kleptomania?”  
Emerald shouted, “Don’t you have some shoes to smell?”  
The last stroke of Emerald‘s pen was an overpowered flourish.  
"Well, mom said I'd never amount to much," she announced. "But if we're being fair here, I lost three points for being friends with an introvert, and- Oh."  
Finally.

Pyrrha reached the pulpit and knelt. She’d brought totems with her: Her spear, shield, and circlet, crafted to resemble the ancient hero’s. She laid these out on the steps, and imbued each with a shock of her aura, to set their gold inlays glowing.  
She heard one of the strangers approaching, but put it out of her mind. Then, from the corner of her eye, she spied a red mini-dress.   
Cinder.  
Cinder knelt beside Pyrrha, and as the ritual began, she followed it in synch.  
They both steepled their hands.  
They bowed until their foreheads touched the floor.   
And then they rose with their eyes averted west.   
They heaved a great sigh, looked up, and were free from it.  
Pyrrha stopped there, though an hour of meditation was supposed to follow.   
She looked at Cinder incredulously. “Are you… How do you know that ritual?”  
“I was a follower of Athena’s,” Cinder smiled.  
“Oh. I… I never thought…” Pyrrha trailed off. Her expression soured, then corrected, as she considered the past tense.  
Cinder offered, “You never thought you’d meet someone who remembered her.”  
Pyrrha smiled and accepted that with a nod. “Yes. It’s very rare. Actually, I didn’t expect to see anyone in here at all.”  
“My apologies.”  
“No! No, it’s fine. To be honest, I don’t have much to meditate on right now. I just like to… Well, it might sound silly.”  
“It’s important for us to reflect and give thanks for all that we have,” Cinder said.  
Pyrrha felt joy and intrigue. A direct reference to the Fall Maiden. Cinder shared in her esoteric knowledge. “Yes! Exactly. My name is Pyrrha Nikkos. Team Juniper, here at Beacon Academy.”  
“Cinder Fall. Cumen. Haven. Would you like to join us?” Cinder motioned to the table, inviting Pyrrha to sit with them.  
Pyrrha stood with her, and Cinder gestured again to a stack of tarot cards on the table. At these, Pyrrha balked. The rational part of her mind wondered, Why weren’t they playing earlier?  
Her delight triggered first. She leaned closer to inspect them, and realized, “Are those made of stained glass? May I?”  
Emerald pulled a card from the deck and handed it to Pyrrha.   
She traced her thumb over the portrait. The design was incredible. Someone had carved the shards so that each card had a unique portrait on the front. And yet…   
She flipped to the back. Symmetrical and occluded. She flipped to the front again and inspected the card. The Hermit: An old man at a table, his shack in the background. He sat at the head of a table, greeting four maidens, each representing a season.  
Pyrrha ran her thumb along the splicing, where strips of lead held them together near seamlessly. Handling the card, she realized it could flex with ease. Her eyes went wide, and she turned to Cinder.  
“Where did you get these?”  
Cinder smiled. “I made them.”  
“Cinder, these are amazing!”  
She nodded her thanks, then drew a second card and handed it over.  
The Tower. Pyrrha accepted the card, then cocked her head at it. Cinder had chosen to depict the tower in Vale, not Mistral. And she had taken great care to depict total destruction. The clock face had been knocked from the tower by a bolt of lightning. Two bodies fell from either side. A Grimm Wyvern flew in the sky, and the sun was black. Fire consumed the card’s bottom.  
Pyrrha turned a concerned look to Cinder, who shrugged. “The Tower is a dire card.”  
Pyrrha drew a third. As her hand touched the deck, she realized what was unfolding. A three-card spread: Past, Present, and Future.  
She lifted the third card.   
Death. Two silver-eyed warriors surrounded by Grimm. Cinder had drawn from many myths to make this deck. Light billowed from their gazes, burning paths through the monsters. They wielded warscythes, the blades arcing to meet as a circle: The immutable cycle of death and rebirth- echoed in the perpetuity of warriors with silver eyes who save the world. But she’d drawn the card inverted.  
Cinder asked, “Would you like to play a round of Maidens?”  
Pyrrha admitted, “I’ve never heard of it.”  
“It’s very simple. We play without the major arcana.”  
Cinder gripped the deck and lightly bent the cards. The top nineteen flicked into her palm, and she set them aside. Pyrrha handed her the other three.  
Cinder continued, “We shuffle the four suits together, each representing a season.”  
She cut the deck, waved the two halves like a magician, then squeezed them until the cards popped from one hand to the other, then back, in a double helix. Mercury and Emerald wore muted, knowing smiles.  
Pyrrha decided instantly that she would put no money on the table. As she sat, she glanced at the major arcana and realized that they had been sorted to the deck’s top. So why was Death inverted?  
Cinder collapsed her shuffling into a single deck, then dealt- flicking cards face down until everyone had four. Then she took her seat, placed the deck at the table’s center, and inspected her hand.  
Mercury and Emerald lifted only the corner of their cards, to check the value. Emerald went back to her magazine. Mercury peered at each player, reading body language.  
Pyrrha lifted her hand and held it tight to her chest, suddenly nervous about the seriousness of the game.  
She looked to Cinder. “So… The rules?”  
Cinder offered another warm smile. Her eye sparkled with mirth. “There are four Maidens at any given time,” she explained. “But when a maiden dies, the powers flow to another person, changing hands in a great and eternal war.”  
Pyrrha stifled a chuckle. “I’ve never heard that version of the story,” she said.  
Cinder kept smiling. “We each begin with four cards. Each round is a season: Winter, Spring, Summer… And Fall. The first season is Winter. For no reason, I will go first. On my turn, I either raise one maiden of the appropriate suit, or I pass.”  
Cinder placed the Five of Winter on the table. The portrait was of Nival Schnee, Weiss’ mother. Her name was displayed on the bottom. Pyrrha blinked at it.   
Emerald didn’t seem bothered. She threw the Eight of Winter onto the table, someone named Shiro. Mercury shrugged, “Pass.” All eyes fell to Pyrrha. She looked into her hand, then carefully placed the Empress of Winter, the Snow Queen of Mantle.  
“Pass,” Cinder cooed.  
“Pass,” Emerald hummed.  
They waited for Pyrrha.  
She said, “I don’t have any more, so I pass.”  
Cinder explained, “In a draw, the last to play wins the season. You get a point.”  
Cinder placed a glass token on the table and scooted it to her. “Then everyone draws four cards, and the next season begins.”  
Everyone drew their own cards. Cinder looked to Emerald.  
“Your season, Emerald.”  
“Spring. Yaaay,” Emerald drawled. She threw down the Queen of Spring, and play proceeded.  
Pyrrha thought her way through the game’s mechanics. There would be one more drawing round, and everyone would get twelve cards total, with four left over. Presumably everybody got one? So the game was about who was willing to sacrifice the most maidens in a single given round. The game was about loss aversion.  
No.  
Pyrrha tilted her head.  
Cinder asked, “Is something wrong?”  
Pyrrha realized, “It’s a game of chance. It just depends on who draws what.”  
Cinder tilted her head to scold. “You say that like it’s distasteful.”  
Pyrrha nodded. “Games are supposed to practice skills.”  
Emerald and Mercury laughed like hyenas.  
Cinder was more reserved, but her smile turned playful, and her eye twinkled. “Keep playing. You might change your mind.”  
A few minutes later, Cinder had the lion’s share of tokens. Mercury had eight cards, but everyone else had run dry.  
By tokens, Mercury sat in last place. He shot a glance to Cinder and asked, “We playing Ragnarok?”  
Pyrrha looked to Cinder, who sighed and explained further.  
“Usually play would end here. But for a more climactic ending, each complete set of four maidens left in your hand nets you a bonus of tokens.”  
Mercury laid out two sets.  
“You would still lose,” Cinder noted.  
“Yeah, but I beat Emerald.”  
“Ugh. We’re not playing your stupid rules, Merc.”  
“Whatever. You’re just mad you’re in last.”  
“I still win three out of four,” Emerald grumbled.  
For a game of chance, that would be statistically impossible. Pyrrha looked to Cinder. The bronze iris had already turned her way, awaiting that realization. There had to be another mechanic at play. Pyrrha looked to Mercury.

She’d sparred with him before the tournament. And like thousands of opponents before, he wasn’t able to land a single hit. Because his legs were metal, and Pyrrha could manipulate magnetism with her semblance. But only now did it occur to her, that no one else knew Mercury’s secret.  
Deception was in his fighting style.  
Cinder shuffled, the cards fanning in a double helix. Pyrrha didn’t know much about cards, but she wondered if a conventional dealer could do that. She’d been staring too long.  
Remembering her manners, she asked, “So how’s the Great City of Mistral doing?”  
Cinder collapsed the deck and dealt as she answered.  
“We’re all sad that you left, of course. We only get to see our hero on cereal boxes now.”  
Pyrrha blushed. “Hero is a strong word.”  
Cinder pouted. “We haven’t had a celebrity like you since… Amber? She belongs to the last generation, though. You know they’re drawing comparisons about you in the tabloids, right? You’re not the Untouchable Girl anymore.”  
“Oh?”  
“You’re Athena,” Cinder said.  
Pyrrha’s blush deepened. “I- Well that’s- Hero seems tame by comparison.” She giggled.  
Emerald looked up from her magazine to glare at her. She snapped, “Athena Parthenos. They’re calling you ‘The Virgin Athena.’”  
That cut Pyrrha’s blushing short. But not her embarrassment. She looked back into her cards and mumbled, “Oh.”   
Cinder cast a low-browed anger to Emerald. “Don’t be rude.”  
“Sorry,” Emerald huffed. She turned back to the magazine.  
Mercury tilted his head and remembered, “Wait. Don’t you have a thing with your team leader? Jaune Arc?”  
Cinder kicked him under the table. He hissed, then shrugged at her, annoyed. She flared her eyes at him. Pyrrha noted these interactions and remembered once again the sorted deck. They hadn’t played until she entered. They had a team of four, but only three were here. Why? Because they’d set the stage for Pyrrha’s arrival.  
Pyrrha swallowed. The question about Jaune was scattering her thoughts. She played through Winter, Summer, and Spring before she’d regained composure.  
The question of propriety guided her. She licked her lips. “Um… Well, despite what tabloids may indulge in, that’s actually private.”  
Emerald played the Five of Fall, then turned a sideways look to Merc and murmured, “Jerk.”  
“Hey, you called her a virgin.”  
“I was teasing. You brought up personal stuff.”  
“Whatever.” He played the Deuce of Fall. The portrait was of Cinder.  
Pyrrha blinked at it. She looked to Cinder, who seemed to think this was normal. “Your turn, Pyrrha.”  
Pyrrha selected a fall-colored card. Her hand rested on it, and she realized that the Ace of Fall was... Pyrrha Nikkos. She wondered what Jaune would think of this. It was silly. Cinder imagined herself and Pyrrha in some grandiose pantheon.   
Pyrrha placed herself onto the table. “Your turn, Cinder.”  
Cinder selected a card, then cooed, “Speak of Salem, and there she shall be.”  
The Three of Fall. Amber.  
“I think I was wrong,” Pyrrha admitted.  
“About?” Cinder cooed innocently.  
“If it’s a game of chance, Emerald can’t win most games. It would be equal.”  
“Couldn’t she? Chance and equality are different things.”  
“I suppose so,” Pyrrha admitted, “But that’s… That’s not very likely.”  
“Maybe it’s her Fate,” Cinder quipped.  
Pyrrha would have giggled a moment ago. Her environment felt controlled, and that felt hostile. She hummed, “It’s silly to think of a force that powerful meddling in card games though, isn’t it?”  
Emerald looked up from her magazine. She was grinning.  
Cinder explained, “We call her Luck when she behaves. When she sins, she is called Chance. And when she brings us to ruin, we curse her with the title Fate.”  
Pyrrha asked, “You’re in the tournament, right?”  
“We are.”  
Pyrrha set her cards down. “This feels a little like a pre-match skirmish.”  
Mercury glanced to Cinder, looking for instructions.  
Emerald’s grin blossomed to show teeth.  
Cinder fired two quick glances, shooing them both. To Pyrrha, she said, “It’s just a card game with your fellow countrymen, Pyrrha. I know my teammates can be intimidating. And rude.”  
Pyrrha sat up straighter and held out her hand. “I’d like to play another round. From the top.”  
If Pyrrha understood correctly, she had just called them out for cheating, and was announcing her challenge, that she was finally willing to cheat back. Cinder’s brow rose, excited. Mercury chuckled. Emerald set down her magazine and gave the game her attention.  
“Oh goodie,” Cinder cooed.  
She held out an open palm, and the cards flew to it and sorted themselves.  
As Pyrrha suspected, Cinder was manipulating them with a semblance. Possibly telekinesis like Professor Goodwitch. Or maybe subtle wind currents. Two could play that game. Pyrrha could nudge the lead with her magnetism.  
A blonde boy stuck his head into the cathedral door and hissed, “Psssssst! Hello? Pyrrha? Oh. Hi, Pyrrha!”  
She was torn. She wanted this fight, but she loved having her name on his mind. She snapped, “Jaune? What are you doing here?”  
“You didn’t answer your Scroll, so…”  
“Can it wait?”  
“Ozpin wants to see you. Now. He said no matter what you’re doing.”  
Pyrrha sighed. She couldn’t say no to the headmaster.  
“Sorry,” she said to the table. “Another time?”  
Cinder offered a new smile, this one sad. She nodded sideways, “If it’s in the cards.”


	17. In Amber Clad

Glynda Goodwitch stood beside Ozpin’s desk and stared out over the emerald city of Vale. To the south-east, she could make out the peaks in Mountain Glenn and the round dome top of Bald Mountain. She felt something bad, neither emotion nor sensory, as if a spiritual wind was blowing from that place.  
Her position as his secretary was a dream come true. She’d discovered too late that life in the field was not to her liking. And life as a city huntress was competitive in the extreme. She’d arrived at the top by nurturing a relationship with Ozpin directly. He rambled constantly and forgot everything. Her job was to remind him of his better ideas. He sat at his desk, beside her, and rambled.  
“I simply cannot trust a man with an army. I cannot trust his habit of recruiting students directly into his military. I cannot trust James Ironwood.”  
She said, “Aren’t we doing the same thing?”  
Ozpin considered, his coffee half-way to his lips. He shook his head and took a sip.  
“This is different. We’re doing it once, and it is necessary.”  
Glynda turned away from the scenery to assure Ozpin. He spent most of his time as a warm and welcoming headmaster flowing with personal advice. Some days he turned into a cranky old hermit suspicious of the world. He needed a woman’s touch to bring him out of that shell.  
“Ozpin, I know James. And we may have had our differences, but he is the man who threw down his life for everyone at Chernobyl.”  
Ozpin waved a hand aggressively to interrupt her.  
“Glynda, do you never question how he survived? Isn’t it suspicious?”  
She snapped, “I know how he survived, Ozpin! They found him half-dead thirty kilometers away! He crawled!”  
“Yes, I know. Still…”  
“Ozpin, I understand why you fear his willpower and worry about his might, but I am not going to listen to you besmirching his motives!”  
Ozpin looked unsettled. “You’re right. Thank you, Glynda. What would I do without you?”  
“Probably spend your whole life in this tower, trying to make a philosopher’s stone and screaming at children who trespass on the lawn.”  
“That does sound appealing,” he admitted.  
They waited for a minute, hoping to kill time. Ozpin turned a glance her way, and an observation. “I know you don’t like this, Glynda.”  
“I don’t care how well she’s doing in combat trials. She’s a child. We’re using her, Ozpin. You’re dragging her into an eternal war over the maiden powers. You’re asking her to kill the Fall Maiden. She’s a child!”  
Ozpin knew how to play a punching bag. He had the uncanny ability to absorb every level of disagreement and seem unfazed.  
“Glynda, I would prefer to seize the powers for myself, and never involve a bystander for all my days. Because I only trust myself with this kind of power. But a student who seeks my council and dwells on my advice is close enough. Anything less is a wildcard. Consider what happens if we do nothing.”   
He swiveled in his chair and looked to Mountain Glenn.  
Glynda pondered that fear, rather than principle, placed her on Ozpin’s side. This could save whole cities. But she also wanted to follow his thought experiment and find a better way.  
“If we do nothing…” she mused.  
“And if the Fall Maiden dies…” Ozpin egged.  
“The powers flow to the last person in her thoughts, if that person is a young girl.”  
“And if that person isn’t?”  
“The next most likely candidate is someone with title to the powers.”  
“For the Fall Maiden, that would be the Maidens of Athena. Athena was a direct descendant from the original Fall Maiden. She made a blood pact with her battle-sisters.”  
“But we’re sure that they died thousands of years ago, without children. So no one has title,” Glynda noted.  
“Which makes the Fall Maiden an exceptionally slippery and volatile asset,” Ozpin grumbled.  
“The next most likely candidate is someone who seeks the power.”  
“Exactly the people we don’t want to have it,” Ozpin said.  
“Hence your obsession, and your means,” Glynda murmured.  
“Yes. Because there is only one way to guarantee that the powers of the Fall Maiden are within our control. There is only one way to guarantee that she becomes the next maiden.”  
Glynda saw no other way but Ozpin’s. She admitted, “She has to kill the Fall Maiden.”  
Ozpin asked, “Is there anyone you trust more than our girl?”  
“I don’t know. I know I don’t trust anyone who seeks that power.”  
“Exactly why I chose her, Glynda. Her restraint could be mistaken for timidity.”  
“If she really has that much restraint, she won’t be able to do what we’re asking. To become a soldier…”  
“I’ll remind you that warfare is the purpose of this academy.”  
“Warfare against Grimm, not other humans. Isn’t that how you distinguished yourself from General Ironwood?”  
“No. I am doing this as a necessity. He enlists his students as a matter of policy. That is the difference.”  
“Can you promise me that we will only do this once?”  
“If there is a better way, I will find it, Glynda.”  
“If she dies, can you promise me that we will never draft our students again?”  
“These are dark times, Glynda. I have pursued every option I have before coming to this moment.”  
“Ozpin. This will only happen once. Right?”  
The elevator sounded, and the door opened for a young Mistralite girl they’d picked up from the tournament circuit. She strolled in with her chest puffed out and her chin held high. She had enough pride to hide how nervous she was about her summons to the headmaster’s office.  
Ozpin smiled warmly, held out his hands, and greeted her.  
“Welcome! Have a seat, Amber.”


	18. A Penny for Your Thoughts

Agent Ciel Soleil placed a finger to her ear and announced, “TacCom, Ciel. Penny Polendina has entered the Fairgrounds.”  
She guided Penny to the metal detector, where two Atlas soldiers made quick work of Security Theater. The line was still a few minutes long, so Ciel grabbed Penny’s hand, to keep her from wandering.   
Penny smiled at the contact. “Are we friends, Miss Ciel?”  
“No, Ma’am.”   
“But you said you like my dress and my sunhat. And now we’re holding hands.”  
“A soldier on duty has no friends, Ma’am.”  
“Next!”  
They took a step forward. Ciel checked her watch. Penny finished maintenance on her combat batteries two hours ago. Her servo check was a week overdue, and she had a heat sink cleaning in five hours. Before then, she had three hours scheduled for socialization.  
Penny leaned over to ask, “Why do you check your watch so much, Miss Ciel?”  
“I am confirming our timetable, Ma’am.”  
“Next!”  
Penny and Ciel stepped up to the metal detector. The soldier, Cobalt, wore a bright nametag sticker over his breastplate. He rambled through a spiel.  
“No weapons are allowed on the fairgrounds except to on duty military and law enforcement officers. No exception for huntsmen or students. Do you have any weapons, armor, ammunition, accessories, prosthetics, cybernetics, or metal plating to declare?”  
Ciel revealed her SRS badge. She could bring in whatever she wanted. Penny walked through and set the alarms off.   
“Oh gosh. I guess I must be carrying some metal,” she said.  
Cobalt sighed. His partner grumbled, “Worst kept secret in Remnant.”  
Ciel silenced him with a sharp glance. She passed through the metal detector and the alarms sounded again. On the other side, Penny covered her mouth.  
“Oh wow! I guess we were both carrying metal, Miss Ciel.”  
“Yes, Ma’am.”  
She gestured Penny onwards, towards people. Ciel had three orders from General Ironwood: Protect Penny’s secret, make her socialize, and keep her away from Ruby Rose. Penny drew her from her thoughts.  
“You know, Miss Ciel, it’s been six hours since you’ve had anything to eat. I bet that’s why you were looking at your watch.”  
“Actually, Ma’am, I was thinking about you.”   
Penny peered at her. “Are you sure we’re not friends, Miss Ciel?”  
“Select a location to eat at, Ma’am.”  
They had a large variety before them. The whole world had representation in cuisines, cultures, and clientele. The fields around the Vytal stadium swayed with colored fabrics and the trade of stories and goods. The population, and the commotion, easily compared to the city itself. Penny pointed at a cobbler’s tent.  
She said, “Eating new things is always good, Miss Ciel. And I read on the CCT network that shoes are edible!”  
“Yes, Ma’am,” Ciel nodded. “But they are very chewy.”  
Penny widened her eyes to show surprise. “Oh! Have you already eaten shoes before, Miss Ciel?”  
“Yes, Ma’am. During survivalist training all members of the Special Retinue Service are required to climb a mountain on the northern ice caps.”  
“Mount Blue Balls!”  
“The official name is Peak Thirty-Three, Ma’am. Let’s eat over here.”  
Ciel pointed to a stand offering Vale cuisine: Fish and Rice. She started walking.   
Penny followed, asking, “Did you eat your shoes on the mountain?”  
“Not mine, Ma’am. But yes. A recruit named Midori… dropped our provisions down a ravine.”  
“You must be pretty mad at her,” Penny guessed. “Or you wouldn’t have told me her name.”  
Ciel didn’t answer. She flattened her combat skirt and sat at a stool. Over her left shoulder, she glimpsed a man holding his rifle at low ready, finger on his trigger. She looked again. Not a man; an Elysian Knight. The robotic soldiers had no protocol for stowing their weapons. Their engineers had overlooked the implications of warlike posture.  
“Miss Ciel?”  
Penny had seen her look at the knight.   
She asked, “Why do humans hate robots?”  
Two rice bowls arrived, and Ciel used the excuse of eating to think. Penny took her own chopsticks and picked up some rice. Ciel tried not to stare. But curiosity got the best of her. She watched Penny toy with the rice.  
Penny watched her watching. “Miss Ciel?”  
Ciel looked away. When she looked again, Penny’s chewing seemed genuine.  
“Humans do not hate robots,” Ciel said.  
“Miss Ciel, Humans do not treat robots as well as they treat animals.”  
Ciel filled her mouth to avoid answering.  
Penny continued, “Humans like animals. Ruby Rose has a dog named Zwei. She says Zwei is part of her family and she loves him like a brother who can’t talk. She feeds Zwei and takes him for walks and talks to him about her problems. I would like a dog. Ruby also has a sister. I would like to have a sister. If we can’t be friends, can we be sisters, Miss Ciel?”  
“No, Ma’am.”  
“Darn. But on the topic, I wonder why humans do not adopt robots. Perhaps because organic companions are more economical. But I am not so sure, because sometimes Zwei breaks things. I think a robot companion would be far more careful with Ruby’s toys. I wonder if we will meet Ruby today. What do you think, Miss Ciel?”  
Ciel understood her orders now. She understood why Penny needed a handler to separate her from Ruby. Penny had a schoolgirl crush.  
“I think humans won’t learn to like robots until we learn to like faunus, Ma’am.”  
“But Shadowcat and Weiss Schnee are already friends.”  
Ciel hadn’t heard about Blake and Weiss. She wondered if Winter knew.   
She turned to Penny. “Where do you keep learning Retinue slang?”  
“From Father. He was a founding member of a unit called-”  
“-That’s classified, Penny. If your father was in the Retinue, you should never discuss it.”  
“Oh. Sorry, Miss Ciel. Anyway, perhaps someday robots and humans can get along like Shadowcats and Schnees.”  
“We’re behind schedule, Ma’am.”  
Ciel stood. Penny followed, but she placed her hands on her hips and countered, “Friendship has no schedule, Miss Ciel.”  
Ciel faced Penny at parade rest.  
“Duty does. Please select a stranger in the crowd and begin socializing. I will step in to the conversation to support you at your signal, Ma’am.”  
Penny relented. She stood straight and turned ninety degrees. Then she turned again. Two women, green and red, were walking this way. Penny angled herself, then walked at them, like a robot on a mission. Ciel cringed. She didn’t want to watch. Duty, and morbid curiosity, forced her.  
Penny introduced herself by shouting “Sal-U-Tations! My name is Penny Polendina! And you two are Emerald Sustrai and…”  
Penny hesitated on the next woman. This caught Ciel’s attention. Penny had a high-speed connection to Atlas’ Identification databases. She recognized everyone. Always.  
“I have no idea who you are!” Penny announced.  
The stranger, a woman in red, placed a hand on her chest and introduced, “Cinder Fall.”  
Penny recognized her name.  
“Oh, wow! You’re in the tournament, too! But your team chose Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black to advance to the doubles round. So, we won’t see each other in the arena.”  
Cinder smiled as if at a child. She purred, “How did you know that?”  
“That is publicly available information on the CCT network,” Penny nodded.  
Emerald gestured over her shoulder. “But we just submitted our decision two minutes ago.”  
Penny crossed two fingers behind her back. Ciel took the signal to approach and intervene.  
“Hello, Penny.”  
“Oh, Hello, Miss Ciel! I was just saying hello to Cinder Fall and Emerald Sustrai.”  
Ciel fired a closed-mouth smile at them.   
Emerald scowled, “And we were asking how she knew our team’s secrets.”  
Penny’s head jerked away in distraction, to the merchant tent they were standing beside.  
“Hey,” she said. She pointed at Emerald.  
“Hey what?” Emerald snapped back.  
“You just walked over to that display case and stole that magnet.”  
Ciel shot a glance at Penny. Was she malfunctioning? “Ma’am. She’s been standing right in front of you and...”  
Penny pointed into Emerald’s clenched fist, then at the blank space in the display case. Emerald looked as shocked as Ciel felt. Cinder’s smile broadened.  
“Good eye,” she praised. Then, to Sustrai, “Emerald, I think you forgot to pay for that.”  
Emerald shrugged and tossed the magnet to Penny. Penny reached to catch it at the base of its arc, but as the magnet approached her body, it snapped up against her forehead. Emerald looked confused. Cinder giggled.  
“Oh no,” Penny realized.  
She pulled her sunhat low over the magnet and began searching the grass at her feet.  
“Oh gosh. I must have dropped it. Where’d it go?”  
She fooled no one. The weirder part was Cinder’s lack of surprise. In Cinder’s smirk, Ciel saw something more than blasé amusement at the act; she saw malice. Cinder cooed, “We’re done here, Emerald.” They turned and strutted away.  
Penny moaned, “Help me find that magnet, Miss Ciel.”  
Ciel tapped her shoulder. “Ma’am. They left.”  
Penny stopped searching. She stopped acting. Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed.   
“They don’t want to be my friends.”  
“Correct, Ma’am.”  
“I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong, Miss Ciel.”  
“As the saying goes: It’s not you; it’s them.”  
Ciel watched Cinder and Emerald stroll away. Her orders tied her to Penny. Instinct told her to reconnoiter, record, and report. And instinct was screaming. She pushed her earbud. What should she say? A Woman in Red gave Penny a funny look?  
“TacCom, Ciel.”  
“Ciel, TacCom. Go ahead, Agent.”  
“Person of Interest…”   
She hesitated. If Penny couldn’t ID her, no one could. “Person of interest. Emerald Sustrai. Haven Academy.”  
“POI Marked. Anything else?”  
“That’s all, TacCom.” She released the bead and looked back to Penny.  
A gust of wind lifted Penny’s sunhat, revealing the magnet. Penny frantically pulled it back down. Just another shift to get through, Ciel thought to herself.  
Penny smiled at her. “On the bright side, Miss Ciel, that was really good teamwork!”  
“Ma’am?”  
“I didn’t know what to say, so I signaled you. And then you came in and rescued me from an awkward situation!” Penny beamed, “Maybe we should be sisters!”  
Ciel smiled, then corrected it.


	19. Der Einsame Schnee

Weiss Schnee stepped off of a shuttle and officially boarded the carrier Eidolon. She’d been on an airwarship before. She recognized the silhouette of the cruiser Woglinde trailing alongside Eidolon’s flight deck. Weiss remembered her first sight of the cruiser, and the great joy it carried. Woglinde had brought Winter back from her first deployment. Now Weiss felt acutely that it was she who had to go to Winter, even when they were both in Vale.  
Professor Oobleck had found video of Apple. He’d found something he didn’t want to be responsible for handing to her. So he’d handed it to Winter, and directed Weiss to visit her. An ensign met her on Eidolon’s deck and led her inside.  
At this altitude, surrounded by the commotion of flight operations, every spoken word had an ethereal wisp to it. She didn’t remember her trip or the faces she passed.  
She sat in a sparse recreation room, and understood that she had to wait for Winter. She didn’t understand anything else. Why couldn’t she make her friendships as deep and meaningful as anyone else’s? Why couldn’t she get Winter’s attention?  
She saw how Ruby cared for Zwei and poured her affection into him as if on reflex. She’d seen Blake spend days sketching her friends from the White Fang, and days more staring at those sketches. She’d listened to Yang’s internal struggles about Blake.  
Weiss felt no affection, no nostalgia, and no great desire for reciprocation from anyone- Anyone but Winter and Apple. The delicate apple necklace felt like a lead chain.  
The door opened, and she looked up with a fake smile. She couldn’t hold it. A stranger entered, wearing the uniform of the Special Retinue Service. This woman, a redhead slightly taller than Weiss, sat across from her at the table. She didn’t speak. She didn’t make eye contact or form any kind of greeting. Her uniform had red accents and, over the left breast, read, “Cherry.”  
“Excuse me,” Weiss asked.  
Cherry reached into her uniform pocket and handed Weiss a candy bar.  
“T-thank you,” Weiss stammered.  
She set the candy bar on the table and asked, “Are you one of Winter’s Soldiers?”  
Cherry didn’t answer. Her neutral-warm expression meant nothing. Cherry looked down at Weiss’ necklace and stared.  
The door opened again. Another SRS soldier, his nametag read Orchid, with purple accents. He stopped in the doorway and looked at Weiss.  
“Hey, Cherry. Who’s this?”  
Cherry shrugged. Both soldiers were staring at her necklace. Weiss turned to Orchid. “Excuse me, Soldier?”  
“Hmm?”  
“Can you go get Specialist Winter?”  
“Who are you?” the soldier shrugged.  
“I’m Weiss Schnee.”  
“I don’t know anyone named Weiss.”  
“I’m her sister,” Weiss snapped.  
Orchid shrugged. “I don’t know who Weiss is. So telling me you’re her sister doesn’t help.”  
“No, I’m not Weiss’ sister. I’m-“  
“Look, whoever you are, why do you want to talk to Winter?”  
“That’s not your business, Soldier,” Weiss hissed.  
Orchid frowned. “Then Winter won’t see you. Go away.”  
“I’m going to wait here for her,” Weiss asserted.  
“Hmm,” Orchid nodded.  
He sat with Cherry and took the candy bar from the table. The silence was awkward. Hearing him unwrap the candy bar and eat it was more awkward. Another soldier entered- A man more than double Weiss’ height. Name: White, with white accents. He looked down at Weiss.  
“Who’s this little thing?”  
Orchid answered, “She said she’s Weiss’ sister.”  
“Who’s Weiss?”  
“This girl’s sister.”  
Weiss interrupted and snapped at White, “Will you help me talk to Winter?”  
White shook his head. “Sorry, stranger, but we don’t know who you are. I’m not even sure why they let you onboard.”  
A fourth soldier entered, finally someone Weiss recognized: Winter’s right-hand woman. Hikari stopped in the doorway. There were now four soldiers looking at her apple charm. None of them looked happy. Despite Orchid’s teasing and White’s welcoming tone and Cherry’s neutral-warm smile, they were all bitter-sweet at best.   
Weiss held out a hand to Hikari. “You know me, right?”  
Hikari nodded. “I do.”  
“Why are they pretending they don’t know who I am?”  
She gestured at everyone else. They all snickered.  
Hikari explained, “We’re legally prohibited from confirming or denying the familial affiliations of Specialists. It’s become a really stupid joke.”  
“But you can take me to see Winter, Right?”  
The snickering faded away.  
Hikari said, “Take a hint, Weiss.”   
Weiss understood, and she suddenly felt like she was drowning. “Winter… Doesn’t want to see me?”  
Hikari shook her head. “I didn’t say that. But now’s a bad time.”  
Weiss shouted, “It’s always a bad time!” Breathing was harder. “I want to see Winter!”  
Hikari shrugged. “You can stay here, but you’re not going to see her.”  
“I’m not leaving until Winter comes out to see me!”  
White laughed. “She has a lot more patience than you, Kid.”  
Orchid added, “And she shouldn’t be interrupted.”  
Cherry nodded her agreement.  
Weiss crossed her arms, to cover the hole in her chest. “I’m not leaving,” she said.  
Hikari leaned against the wall. White sat on a table. Orchid finished the candy bar. Cherry’s expression stayed warm and neutral. Everyone sat that way for a very long time. But the Winter Soldiers were right. Weiss didn’t have their patience.  
Her conviction left. Despair was all that remained of her anger. She couldn’t fake a smile. She could only be the weakling her father always yelled at. A tear escaped. She didn’t cry. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her anymore.  
“I had a cousin,” she said.  
She gripped Apple’s charm, as if she could hold Apple’s hand. The Winter Soldiers had the uncanny silence and stillness of the season. When Weiss spoke, she felt as if she was alone.  
“She was living in Mountain Glenn, studying Dustronics at the Academy for Noumenometry. Her parents were killed by the White Fang. So she was going to live with us. But then the Grimm attacked. One of my Professors found Apple’s Scroll. She recorded videos of the attack, and of people, and of herself. And all of the video she appears in… Professor Oobleck sent it to Winter. So I came here to watch it with her.”  
Weiss looked into her grip, at the charm.  
“Everyone from Atlas had left. So… She didn’t know anyone. The Grimm came in a swarm larger than anyone had ever seen before or since. The whole city burned. Everything was destroyed. And through all of that pain and fear, up to her last moment… She was… Alone. And I always think about why she did it. Why she jumped. She was supposed to escape. She was on a bullhead, flying away. But then-”  
“We know,” Hikari interrupted. “We were there.”  
Hikari’s breast pocket rumbled, and she pulled a scroll from it. “Orchid, White, we’re summoned.”  
The men stood and left quickly. Hikari lingered at the door, looking at Apple’s charm. She said, “Cherry. Permission to speak.”  
And she left.  
Weiss looked across the table, at Cherry. The soldier smiled, shed a tear, and reached across the table to place a hand over Weiss’.  
And she said, “She wasn’t alone, Weiss. You aren’t alone.”


	20. Cherry Popping

Vale’s first settlers erected a beacon for the lost to join civilization. The valley gave them fertile soil and defensible terrain, rich in minerals. Generations later, south-east, they discovered Mountain Glenn, and its bountiful Dust. The vein there stretched from Remnant’s core to the tips of mountains. The surveyors sent back a photograph of a man standing in The Glenn, his hand against a Dust spire that dwarfed him.

The Merlot family seized that abundance and changed the world. The Schnee family’s vision of a Cross Continental Transmit System became real. The military replaced its lead bullets with dust cartridges. Huntsmen crafted weapons not even imaginable in the previous age.

There was one problem. As humanity’s fire grew brighter, its shadows in the outlands grew stronger. 

Atlas evacuated first. And Cherry responded first. Her pager wailed in her purse, and she knew without checking that her vacation was over in a big way. She didn’t say goodbye to her date. She stepped out of her high-heels and ran.

The platoon at the embassy had sealed the gates. She flashed her badge and slid through. In the locker rooms, she threw a kit harness on over her sun dress and started her equipment check. The door slammed open again for Orchid, White, and Hikari. In twelve years, they would be known as The Winter Soldiers, the elite of the elite. For now, they were seasoned veterans of Atlas’ Special Retinue Service.

“Some vacation,” Orchid noted.  
He lifted a kit with dark purple accents over his torso.  
Agent Hikari snapped, “Updates?”  
Cherry gestured for television. A holo-screen appeared. Lisa Lavender of Vale News Network didn’t look like she was reporting the end of the world. She smiled at the camera and babbled about the weather, and a fair, and all the good reasons to visit Vale today.

“Been thinking of a vacation? Vale Transit Authority has announced free passes from Mountain Glenn to Vale for the whole weekend, in celebration of the Vytal Tournament’s closing ceremony.”

White asked, “Why aren’t they mentioning the Grimm? Shouldn’t they be evacuating?”  
Cherry pulled her boots on. She saw Orchid shaking his head.   
“They can’t. They don’t have enough time to get everyone out, so they won’t announce an evacuation until their VIPs are clear.”  
The team hefted their rifles, ready for action.  
“This is gonna be bad,” Orchid guessed.  
The door opened. Captain Gray entered in his infantry fatigues and officer’s combat helmet.  
“Agent! You’re assembled?”  
“We’re ready, Sir,” Agent Hikari nodded.  
He tossed a data slate to her. “Most of our VIPs are in the Embassy, and I have the platoon securing the exits. We’re missing Apple Schnee. A huntress named Summer Rose says she has her at the base of the CCT. Hikari, Orchid, bring her back here. You have an hour until the last flight leaves.”  
Captain Gray turned to Cherry. “You and White are coming with me. The ambassador thinks he’s still in command. I’ll try to explain, but we might have to kill him.”  
Cherry and White shared a glance.   
Captain Gray asked, “Is that a problem?”  
Agent Hikari nodded. “You realize he founded our unit?”  
“That was decades ago. Right now, he’s the difference between getting everyone home and getting everyone dead. You worry about Apple Schnee, Agent. You two, follow me.”

Hikari and Orchid sprinted to duty. Cherry and White followed Captain Gray into the embassy’s hallways. Cherry didn’t know much about Captain Gray. This was his first commission. He’d been at Chernobyl. But otherwise, he was fresh out of Officer School. He’d learned a sense of urgency from somewhere, and Cherry knew from experience it would serve him well. 

White, at her side, was a combat buddy from selection camp. They’d struggled together for the last six years. They’d climbed Mount Blue Balls, wandered the many forests of Remnant, and levelled a whole settlement together. Their height difference was a comical aesthetic, but had never been a problem. She looked up to check his expression. He frowned down at her. White, she knew, had joined to fight Grimm. He didn’t like the jobs that pitted him against people. Especially brothers in arms.

They muscled security out of their way and entered the state room. Their single file formation broke into a wedge, with the soldiers flanking Gray. He stopped in front of the desk, where Ambassador Noir Soleil stared intently at the radio. Soleil lifted a finger for silence, and Gray was patient enough to spare him a few seconds.

The man on the radio said, “This is Cyril Ian, with Vale News Network. I have some unfortunate news from the Tactical Coordinator in Mountain Glenn. Grimm on the perimeter are harrying the walls defenses. The military is asking for the streets in the outer districts to be kept clear. There is also a voluntary evacuation in effect. City Police will protect your belongings. Now is an excellent time for a vacation to the big city!”

Ambassador Soleil was an old man. Cherry thought he looked a little over two-hundred. And he sounded that old.   
He grumbled, “Our sins finally manifest.”  
“We’re evacuating,” Gray snapped. “We’re leaving by air and flying directly to Atlas.”  
Soleil frowned. “I have ordered everyone to proceed to the trains post-haste. As the radio-man says-”  
Gray drew his pistol and let its shout silence the radio. Noir Soleil didn’t flinch. He waited for Gray to explain.  
“The wall is already breached, Sir. Once the line breaks, we’ll be overrun, and Ozpin will blow the train tunnels. Lower the flag and report to the helipad.”  
Gray kept his revolver brandished.   
Ambassador Soleil smiled. “Are you hoping that I’ll offer you some excuse? It is within your power to kill me, Gray. I know you want to. Your sense of… Not morality. Morality demands action. Not Duty… Shame cripples you. Ozpin, likewise, has certain inflexibilities when in the public’s eye. What makes you think he can destroy the tunnels?”  
Captain Gray said, “I just told him to.”  
Noir relented. “By air then.”  
“See you on the helipad, Sir.” Captain Gray turned to leave.   
Noir held up a hand. “Wait. The embassy has an obligation to fulfill. The Merlot family estate is near the wall. Their service to the State of Mantle places them under the protection of the Retinue. Or have we abandoned those principles? I know things have changed since my retirement.”  
He looked to Cherry for an answer. She thought it through. The charter of the Special Retinue Service was to serve the Crown of Mantle and protect humanity’s strategic assets. That definitely included the Merlots. She glanced to White and shrugged.   
He said, “We can do it.”

Captain Gray tipped his helmet to them, and they turned to sprint. In the garage, they found Hikari and Orchid tossing crates from the bed of an armed truck.  
White shouted to them. “Where are the other vehicles?”   
Hikari gestured at the empty expanse of the garage. “The platoon took everything but this junk.”

Cherry and White joined in, emptying the seats. They’d need the space for their VIPs. Cherry had the smallest profile of the group. She mounted the gun on the bed and started her functions check. Orchid hopped into the bed with her. White turned the keys, and the engine rumbled to life like a purring great cat.

Everyone perked up at the sound. Hikari turned to look at the engine.  
“This a Diesel?”  
Orchid nodded. “Yeah. Warthogs run on diesel.”  
“Warthog?”  
White revved the engine. “Sounds more like a Puma.”  
He changed gear, and the Puma leaped out the garage ramp and onto the boulevard.

Their assignment to Mountain Glenn was supposed to be a break after Furburg- a baby-sitting assignment in paradise. Moving-in day was awesome. Their daily runs took them past hectares of grass marked for construction. They’d all climbed Bald Mountain twice. It towered over the plains and stuck out at double the height of the other peaks. The whole place was surreal in its beauty. But now, driving full speed down an empty highway, the place was eerie. Traffic in the opposite direction stood still, with people abandoning their cars to run. That desperate mob stretched to the horizon.

Cherry felt the wind flapping at her dress and tearing at her cheeks like gunpowder. She touched the sting on her skin and felt premature nostalgia. The powder and slug rifle on her back was days away from replacement. She’d already tested the new dust-powered laser rifles. She hated them.

Orchid spoke her mind. “I just realized, this is the last time we’ll get to use gunpowder rifles.”  
He glanced up to Cherry. She nodded.  
White called, “Brace! I’m swerving!”  
They whipped past a line of concrete barricades, where militiamen braced their rifles in the slats like a phalanx of spearmen.   
Hikari gestured at them. “That was Captain Scarlatina, Vale third Cav. Where’s their armor?”  
White shrugged. “They weren’t on alert. It’s probably packed up in the depot. Here’s our exit.”  
The Puma swerved off the highway and down a tunnel. For thirty seconds, they drove through dim lighting and close quarters. Then the tunnel opened, and they were in the undercity. 

The expanses of easy dust had become the city’s second half. Everyone lived above ground and worked below. The off ramp curved to the CCT subnode’s first basement floor, a nexus of highways and footpaths to each of the colossal cavern’s levels.  
“No Grimm,” Orchid noted.  
Hikari turned in her seat, elbow up on the headrest. “Give it an hour. Everyone remember, your only objective is the VIPs. We didn’t make it through Furburg to choke on a hairball here.”  
She took a long look at Cherry, at her dress, and smiled. She glanced to White’s cargo shorts and Orchid’s tropical themed button-down shirt.   
“You guys look ridiculous,” she laughed.  
Orchid shook his head. “Normal people have a civilian wardrobe, Hikari.”  
She gestured to Cherry. “Don’t civilians wear pants?”  
“She was on a date,” White defended.  
“So much for that,” Orchid lamented.  
Hikari held up a hand. “Hang on now. Ebon Merlot’s rich and hot. Maybe he’ll be grateful Cherry rescued him.”  
Orchid frowned. “Sadly, no. He’s after Raven Branwen. And she’s a Huntress.”  
White glanced into his rearview. “Cherry’s in luck. Branwen shot him down already.”  
“Really?”  
Hikari nodded. “Yesterday.”  
Cherry cleared her throat into her mic. Hikari sighed. Then she nodded. And said, already regretting it, “Alright, Cherry. Permission to speak.”  
Cherry spouted, “I could get Ebon pregnant and you’d be clear to go for Branwen.”  
Orchid squinted.   
White shuddered in his seat and shouted. “God damnit, Hikari! This is why we don’t let her talk!”  
“Yeah, yeah,” Cherry dismissed, “Hikari, seriously, Branwen’s available. Think about it.”  
Hikari adjusted her harness. “Uh… Qrow Branwen’s really not my type,” she said.  
Everyone laughed. Orchid managed to say, “No shit! She meant Raven!”  
Hikari shook her head and smiled. “How’d I blow it?”  
“Receptionist at the embassy’s into you,” White said. “And she read you when you walked in.”  
“Great. Thanks for telling me, guys,” Hikari groaned.

White pulled them into the parking lot and skidded to a stop. Orchid hopped out. Hikari checked her watch. “Grab the Merlots and meet us back here in thirty. Stay on mission.”  
White and Cherry nodded. Hikari jumped out and bolted to the tower.  
White made the tires squeal as he raced to the onramp.  
In the tunnel, just as the radios began to crackle and spit from distance, Hikari whispered, “Soft contact. Play it safe.”  
The Puma soared as it cleared the surface, then bounced on its suspension. And their radio contact ended. A nevermore glided in the distance. The wind turned shrill and sour. The road climbed into hills and trees. The grassy plains turned to sparser, pebbled dirt.  
Cherry looked down to her battle buddy. “White?”  
White aligned to the road paint and then glanced at her in his rear-view. “Yeah, Cherry?”  
“They said you climb Blue Balls by finding out who you are. That was twenty years ago. Still got no idea.”  
White shrugged. “We’ve got, like, two-hundred years to figure that out.”  
Cherry shook her head. “Eighty. All the ‘roids and dust infusions they gave me reduce lifespan.”  
White cast her a sympathetic glance.  
Cherry looked into the forest, to the ground. The pebbles trembled.   
She said, “Days like these, I think we’ve got hours.”  
They zoomed past a road sign, and White gently swerved at his exit.   
Cherry asked, “How do you deal with it?”  
White cringed in the mirror. “I don’t.”  
The trees broke. Cherry saw the mansion. She called, “Broken window on the third floor! Evade! Evade!”  
White zigzagged off of the road and hopped a small hill over the aesthetic wall. They skidded to a halt in the driveway without contact and sprinted through a side door, weapons up.

They found the first bodies in the kitchen, where the staff lay in flour and blood. The haphazard wounds meant someone had poorly sprayed the room with a pistol. That someone hadn’t had the decency to tap their heads. Cherry saw the Dust effects on the tile walls and signaled to White: PISTOL. AURA PIERCING.

The next bodies lay in the foyer. Ebon Merlot sat faceless in the entryway beside his two nieces. Their charred corpses fused together in the corner they’d huddled in. Countess Merlot looked alive, though barely, sitting in her chair after two-hundred years of living. She had the look of an ancient tree that had been stabbed in the heart. The knife, and nothing else, was a giveaway.

White placed a hand to the Countess’ forehead and mouthed, “Warm.”

The four most famous brothers on Remnant lay dead against the dining room table. In life, they’d been called The Four Season of Industry. Cherry lifted one’s head to see the foam at his mouth. They each had an empty glass. And in the table’s center was a decanter. Poisoned wine.

Cherry cleared the parlor, and saw out the windows that the dogs were all at their chain’s end, their corpses piled together.   
She met White at the stairs, and they both signaled clear.  
Through the open door, a raven soared into the room and perched on the bust of Pallas Athena. 

Cherry kept her attention up the stairs, but signed to White: SITREP?  
White signed: ONE-FAUNUS-PISTOL.  
Cherry shook her head and pantomimed shooting someone execution style, and then herself. White shrugged that he wasn’t sure. They heard a round expended upstairs, and a body hit the floor. A young girl screamed, and her footsteps passed over them. A man followed, bellowing, “It’s better this way, Fola!”  
“No! No!”  
Cherry and White sprinted up the stairs. The man screamed, “Fola! You are too young to understand! At least grant me that you will die with dignity!”  
They found him in the hallway, the eminent Doctor Merlot, trying to kick down his granddaughter’s door. He shot at the lock, but his undisciplined aim only put holes in the wood and emptied his magazine. The slide on his pistol clicked back, empty, and Cherry lowered her rifle to charge and tackle him.  
“NO!” he screamed, “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!”  
Cherry put him down with a swift ball tap and a stomp to his jaw. She kicked the door open. The next moment was governed by reflexes. Cherry had a gun in her face. She reached out and jammed the slide with one hand. With the other, she bopped Fola Merlot’s cute little nose. Fola was a scared child, but she’d chosen to not play victim. A copy of Crusade sat open on the nightstand, hollowed out. Cherry tossed the weapon aside and forced Fola to the ground. She cuffed her. They made quick work dragging the Merlots to the Puma.

Cherry strapped Dr. Merlot into the cargo belts on the Puma’s bed. White secured Fola’s seatbelt. It was as he started the engine that Cherry heard motion in the dog yard. She looked at the piled corpses, just in her line of sight.  
She called, “Motion! North yard of the house!”  
White turned to look. He turned back to Fola. “Sweetie? You have any family still alive?”  
Her eyes teared up. The shock had abated, and the reality made her sob. White shouted back, “Not Friendly!”  
Cherry hopped on the truck bed and brought the gun around. White called, “Brace!” and the Puma crashed through the mansion gates.

The pile of dog corpses dissolved, flesh slithering flat or burning away. And where they had lain was now a shadow, roused by the cacophony. Red eyes and pearlescent bones pointed at Cherry, and she felt the dread attention of the Grimm. A great void reached out and touched her soul. The damned turned their sullen whispers to her ears.

She called, “Boarbatusk! Go! GO!” And answered those whispers with Bone Piercing Incendiary .30 at ten rounds per second. They swerved onto the highway, but the monster had closed distance. It swiped at the wheel just as they accelerated away.

No real creature could keep up with a car. But Grimm cared for physics like they cared for municipal codes. The shadow rolled onto its face, and the bone carapace along its curled body acted as a wheel, turning as if the god of death had decided to drive them down. White swerved to let it pass and crash into the highway’s walls. The boarbatusk unraveled, and Cherry sent a burst of ammunition at its exposed belly. The rounds deflected. She’d seen that before, but… Only on a huntsman. She knew she could have seen it wrong. The rounds could have hit asphalt.

White asked, “Did you get it?”  
“It’s still up!”  
“It won’t work!” Fola wailed.   
“Cherry! Left! High!”  
She spun the gun around and spotted a young Nevermore, only the size of a man, diving into a high-G turn to try and swoop her with its claws. She spent a heartbeat leading the shot and unleashed the cannon. The rounds deflected again, and she saw how the sunlight played off of an aura around the Grimm.

“Shit! Evade!”  
“Damnit, Cherry! I can’t do this!”  
White slammed his breaks, and the Nevermore swooped ahead of them. He spun around to dodge the boarbatusk, and pulled a full doughnut to keep on the right way.  
“That won’t keep working, Cherry! You’ve gotta hit it!”  
“I did! No effect!”  
“Fucking what?”  
The nevermore pulled an impossibly sharp turn and accelerated toward her. Five sets of talons emerged from its chest. Cherry dove to her back and drew her sidearm, the Retinue’s “Last-Resort” Revolver. She screamed and fanned six rounds of .45 Aura Piercing at her deepest fear. It puffed like smoke struck by a bellows. Its bones scattered around her, their red-spiral inlays glowing, then igniting and burning out of existence before they’d finished bouncing.

The boarbatusk made a third lunge, but White swerved down into the undercity. A Grimm that young wouldn’t be clever enough to follow them. Cherry stayed down on the bed, panting and reloading. On a second thought, she radioed, “I’m alive.”  
“Same,” White chuckled.

They broke from the tunnel into the depths of hell. The echoes of gunfire and screaming filled their ears. The radio crackled, and White seized on that opportunity.  
“Hikari! We’re on our way back! You need a ride?”  
“Yeah! Switch to your side-arms and come in hot! Repeat, Aura-Piercing! Use Aura-Piercing!”

The ramp turned down, and the Puma’s suspension made it jump, as if from rock to rock down a cliff.   
White skidded into the parking lot, and Orchid climbed into the bed, carrying another kid.   
Hikari stood farther away, surrounded by Beowolves. Old Beowolves; Cherry had never seen so many bones on a Grimm. And that meant smart Beowolves. 

If Hikari pulled the trigger, they’d realize she couldn’t hurt them. One lunged forward, but it had learned caution in its decades. Hikari turned to face it, keeping Apple between her shoulder blades. The monster hesitated and retreated. 

Apple’s marble dress sparkled even in the parking lot’s fluorescent lights, catching the light as her skirt twirled, and the SDC logo on her vest had a green sheen that flared as she moved.

Hikari shouted, “Now! Go! Run!”   
Apple ran and jumped into the truck bed. Hikari backpedaled her butt onto the tail, and the Beowolves fanned out under the attention of all four soldiers. White revved them back onto the highway, and the pack split up to find easier prey. Apple’s hyperventilating was audible over the warthog.

Hikari sighed her adrenaline free. Cherry scooted beside her, so they were dangling their legs together over the road. Hikari turned to her and asked, “Casualties?”  
Cherry nodded. “The Merlots had a mass suicide. We rescued two. White and I are fine.”  
Hikari pulled a Scroll from her kit and announced, “Barometer’s bottomed out. Takes a lot of Grimm to do that. Expect weather. Oh, and White?”  
“Yeah?”  
“We have twenty minutes.”  
“Pedal’s all the way down,” he nodded.  
The Puma cleared the tunnel, and they saw the sky again, now overcast. Darkness pooled in the clouds. In the distance, Cherry saw smoke rising, and Nevermores circling. Hundreds. She turned to look at Orchid and his rescue, another girl Apple’s age.  
She asked, “Who’s that?”  
Orchid panted, “Ciel Soleil. She’s the ambassador’s daughter.”  
Hikari turned into the conversation and snapped, “He didn’t mention a daughter.”  
Orchid shrugged.  
Hikari looked to Cherry. They both shrugged. They turned back to the road, and watched it trail out from under them. This was the best part of the nightmares.  
Hikari nudged Cherry’s arm and offered, “Sorry about Ebon.”  
The loss did hurt. It was a joke, but there was a twinge of reality to her fantasy of marrying him. He’d been an icon of the few safe places on Remnant. Now she had a lifetime of warfare ahead of her. There would be no respite in the next eighty years. It was a scary thought, the kind Grimm presence causes, she realized. She didn’t want to feel it. She didn’t want to imagine Ebon’s mangled features.   
“Yeah, well,” Cherry finally mumbled, “He’s kind of a stiff, anyway.”  
Hikari laughed.   
Cherry continued, “And now that his face is all messed up, I dunno’. The attraction’s gone.”  
“Gotta find you a livelier guy,” Hikari offered.  
“They have auras,” Apple said.  
Hikari and Cherry turned to look at her. In desperation, she repeated it.  
“They have auras!”  
Over the headsets, White crackled, “She’s got a point.”  
Cherry looked to Hikari. She saw that her friend was scared.  
“You too, huh?” Cherry whispered.  
Hikari nodded. A bolt of lightning lit her face. Then thunder cackled across the sky, and a sprinkle of rain began. Fell winds competed with her voice on the radio.  
“I saw Rocket artillery hit that Goliath. It should have been annihilated.”   
She swallowed. “We have to get on that bullhead.”

The Puma swerved onto side streets. They skidded to a stop out front of the embassy. Two guards remained on the perimeter, shivering in the unnatural gusts of ice-wind. Their bullhead idled on the rooftop. Cherry pushed the three little girls inside first. Upstairs, Fola, Apple, and Ciel were first on the tilt-jet. Captain Gray had waited on the helipad. Rain soaked his uniform and dripped from his helmet. White flopped Dr. Merlot’s body into the aircraft. Cherry stood guard beside Captain Gray.

He leaned into her ear and shouted to be heard over the engines and wind.  
“That’s all the Merlots?”  
She couldn’t find the words for it. She nodded. He read it in her expression. He looked out to the horizon.  
“Apple’s the only one we need,” he admitted.  
He seemed stuck, staring at the darkness creeping from the East.  
“I’m glad I don’t live in Vale,” he said.  
And he turned with Cherry to sit in the bullhead’s side door. The tilt-jets screamed. The craft lifted.

Cherry motioned Gray closer.   
She shouted into his ear. “The goliath has an aura!”  
“What?”  
The engines were too loud, or he didn’t believe her. She made hand signals.  
“HUNTSMAN-GRIMM-AURA.”  
She watched his squint fade to disbelief, then understanding.  
She shouted, "Alert Vale! Collapse the tunnels!”  
“They Did!”  
She signaled: “GOLIATH. TOPSIDE. WALL. NEGATVIE.”  
Captain Gray shrugged. "There’s nothing any of us can do! Vale’s done for!"  
The engines waned off as he shouted the last line. He checked his shoulder, to see who’d heard. Everyone.

Gray shook his head and looked out to the distance again. As they rose to the cloud layer, the vanguard of the Grimm came into perspective. The whole of the suburbs was overrun. They tore at every structure, muzzles uprooting gardens, disassembling people and their things in a frenzy of annihilation. The peripheries of the swarm were tearing at the embassy gates.  
Gray pointed. “Close call.” He wiped rain from his face.  
Cherry nodded her agreement. She’d been advised in selection camp that tragedy and comedy were two faces of the same coin. She had a quip ready, something really dark. But she never told her joke. Apple Schnee stepped between her and Captain Gray. And then she jumped.

Grey shouted, “NO!” and tried to grab her. His hand caught on her necklace, a silver chain. She dangled from his grip for a few seconds.   
She’d been shell shocked before. Now her eyes brimmed with sapience. She put a hand on his and said, “It’s going to be okay.”  
The chain snapped under her weight, and she tumbled away from the craft. They lost sight of her as they lifted into the clouds. Gray stared at the chain in his fist. Blood trickled from his grip and dripped from the silver. He uncurled his fingers to reveal the charm on the end, a small apple emblazoned with a snowflake. The curved edge had sliced his palm.

He looked at Cherry.  
“Fuck!” she screamed.  
Cherry pushed her way to the front of the bullhead and grabbed the pilot.  
“Go back! Down! Down! We have to go back!”  
The bug eyed helmet shook its head and pointed. There, she saw something worse than the dead Merlot girls, or their Uncle’s mangled face, or the pile of dogs in their yard. 

What they had seen on the ground was a mass of Grimm greater than any army. What she saw above the clouds was a monster of impossible size. The whole airborne horde of the Grimm swarm stretched over the curvature of Remnant. And this beast’s wings covered that swarm. As it moved, it eclipsed the sun, as if the last of the gods had finally closed His eyes and turned away.


	21. Analysts

Hikari entered Data Analysis HQ and stopped just inside the doorway. The carrier Eidolon’s electronics and communications suite all routed through this dark room, where analysts in stadium seating pieced through everything they knew about everything. Right now, every one of those analysts answered to Specialist Winter. She stood at the stadium’s head, looking down over her underling’s shoulders and onto the main screen.

The video there had a timestamp from a few months ago. Some girl in a black and red combat skirt turned away from the camera and waved, “Take care, friend!”  
The video repeated every two seconds. It had all of Winter’s attention. She didn’t acknowledge Noir Soleil at her right, nor react to Agent Hikari when she stopped at Winter’s left.

Hikari leaned to her and whispered, “Weiss refused to leave. Cherry’s keeping her company.”  
Winter didn’t answer that. Hikari nodded hello to Soleil. A lot of people wished he would die, but feared him too much to act. Hikari had only very recently met someone she trusted enough to speak about him with. She’d only warned Winter that he was evil. Winter hadn’t passed any judgment verbally, but Hikari knew the Schnees never publicly acknowledged their long list of enemies.

The girl on screen and her high-pitched voice finally grew on Hikari’s nerves. She asked, “Who is that?”  
Winter hummed, “Ruby Rose.”  
“And why are we watching this?”  
“Because Penny sent it. According to the metadata, Ruby is tied to everything.”  
“The Woman in Red?”  
Winter corrected, “Literally. Everything.”  
Hikari remembered the cape they found in Mountain Glenn. “Ruby Rose. Relation to Summer Rose?”  
“Yes. But also… She’s Weiss’ teammate at Beacon. This has become very complicated.”  
Winter’s “this” could have meant a lot of things. Hikari nodded very slightly in Noir Soleil’s direction. Winter shook her head, just as imperceptibly. 

At their side, Noir had ideas of his own. He kept his eyes on the screen, but turned his chin to them, to ask, “She looks young and local. Signal Academy?”  
Winter corrected, “Beacon. Professor Ozpin advanced her two years because of exceptional combat ability. She’s had special attention from one of Signal’s instructors, Qrow Branwen.”  
“You seem to already know her,” Soleil noted.  
“Tangentially,” Winter admitted.  
Hikari gestured at the repeating video and Ruby’s perky voice. “Can we mute that?”  
The analyst nearest her did so, and then slowed the footage to seconds per frame. They watched Ruby turn away in stop motion. There wasn’t any sense to draw from it.   
Noir asked, “So how does this fourteen year old girl connect to Mountain Glenn?”  
Hikari noted the detail, and saw that Winter caught it as well.  
“That’s a suspiciously accurate guess,” Winter prodded.  
Noir answered, “I make it a point to keep track of the state’s enemies. Shadowcat is on team RWBY.”  
Hikari hummed, “I guess we were the last people to find out.”  
Noir held out his hand, palm up. “I’m new to this investigation, Winter. I’ve yet to learn how Team RWBY connects to the Woman in Red or her activities in Mountain Glenn.”  
Winter answered, “Team RWBY entered Mountain Glenn with Professor Bartholomew Oobleck. They encountered the White Fang and failed to stop the train attack.”  
Noir turned an incredulous look to Winter. “You are assuming their intentions, Specialist.”  
Winter retracted from that, then took an offensive step toward him. “To believe that team RWBY participated in the attack, you have to assume that Weiss Schnee has become a White Fang radical.”  
“To believe they opposed it, you have to assume that Shadowcat stopped being a White Fang radical.”  
He gestured to the screen, where analysts were throwing new information. “And look, team RWBY was involved with the White Fang’s Dust thefts throughout Vale. They were at the docks with Penny, fighting Torchwick. There they are at Tukson’s book trade, the day after the White Fang murdered him. There’s Ruby Rose, in the CCT control room on the night of the break in. And look there. They…”  
Noir Soleil stepped forward on his cane, shocked. “Doctor Merlot is alive?”  
Another article followed, “Merlot dead,” and Noir shrugged, “Oh.”  
Hikari skimmed the story and realized in her gut that Winter would be furious. Weiss had explicitly said that team RWBY only visited Mountain Glenn once. But according to this information, sourced from Beacon Intelligence, team RWBY had returned on a treasure hunting expedition, gotten lost, and resurfaced a few days later off the coast. Hikari checked Winter’s face. Ever so slightly, she’d sucked her cheeks in.

Noir seemed to finish reading. He frowned. “So team RWBY has been to Mountain Glenn, and has met Doctor Merlot. And upon returning, Ruby surely told the tale to Penny. The last time they spoke was yesterday, when Agent Ciel lost control of her. And Penny made these connections and sent us this two second video of Ruby Rose, believing that it explains everything.”

They watched in very slow motion, inspecting every frame, for minutes on end, as two seconds of Ruby waving elapsed.  
Noir sighed, “Penny overestimates our cleverness.”  
Hikari saw Winter’s pupils contract. She’d taken that as a challenge.  
She murmured, “Ruby Rose… Was not supposed to be in Mountain Glenn. The first time. Professor Oobleck told us that she took her team there and very adventurously disobeyed his orders, which lead her to discover the White Fang operation and their train. It follows that their interest in Mountain Glenn was separate from the school’s assignments.”

Hikari liked Winter’s eureka looks. Her head snapped up, and her eyes sparkled as her irises shifted. She realized, “They’ve been pursuing Roman Torchwick. Why?”  
Hikari thought it was obvious. She blurted, “Because he’s leading the White Fang now, and Shadowcat doesn’t like that.”  
Noir shook his head. “Then why did they go back to Mountain Glenn and look for Dr. Merlot?”  
A second eureka look from Winter. And she laughed. Hikari hadn’t heard that noise before. It was surprising and pleasant. And Winter suddenly looked like the softest, most endearing person she’d ever seen.   
Winter said, “Ruby Rose is leading her own investigation into the Woman in Red! First she tracked Roman Torchwick, who we now have in custody, and who we know is connected. Then she went after Doctor Merlot, who we know is connected. Ruby Rose is pursuing the same case we are. But that raises the question… How does Ruby know about the Woman in Red?”

An analyst gestured another video onto the screen. And there they saw Ruby Rose in a police station, dated to the previous year. Everyone quieted. On the screen, Ruby shifted her weight in a folding chair. Across the table sat Professor Glynda Goodwitch of Beacon.

Glynda said to Ruby, “Please speak clearly into the camera and tell your story from the beginning, Miss Rose.”  
Ruby fidgeted like a typical fourteen-year-old, glanced at the table, and said, “I was told there would be cookies.”  
“There will be,” Glynda nodded.  
Ruby purred “Yussss,” under her breath.  
“Your story, Miss Rose.”  
“Okay, so I was in From Dust Till Dawn, because they have this awesome comic book section at the back. And I was listening to music with my headphones on, so I didn’t notice anything until this guy tapped me on the shoulder.”  
Hikari had spent twenty hours that week reading fairy tales because of Doctor Oobleck’s cryptic clues about the Four Maidens. A detail about Ruby had just struck a chord with those ancient myths. Ruby continued. “So I asked him, ‘are you robbing me?’ And he said, ‘yeah.’ So I was like ‘Hiiiiiiya! Whapow! Tchya! Tchya! And they had dust-tipped hatchets, so I was kinda worried, but they weren’t even huntsmen, so it was a piece of cake. But then their leader was this guy with a bowler hat and a cane that shot roman candles. And he was like-”  
Hikari leaned in to Winter and whispered, “I think I see what Penny sees.”  
Winter glanced to Noir, to make sure his attention was on the screen. Noir seemed a mixture of perplexed and annoyed. She whispered back, “Later.”  
Ruby continued, “So then this bullhead pulled up alongside the building. And he jumped into it, but then you showed up and you were SOOOOOO COOOOOOL! I thought you were gonna blow them out of the sky, but then that woman in red was standing in the bullhead going POW POW POW out of nowhere and-”  
“-What did you say?” Glynda snapped.  
“What did she say?” Winter realized.  
“I thought you were gonna blow them out of the sky, but… The Woman in Red…”  
Glynda and Winter wore the same expression.  
“Thank you,” Glynda said. She stood from the table and paced behind Ruby. “I hope you realize that your actions tonight will not be taken lightly, Young Lady.”  
Glynda gestured her wand at the camera, ending the recording.

Noir Soleil blurted, “Ruby Rose has silver eyes.”  
Winter and Hikari both looked at him incredulously. They’d spent weeks accepting that the supernatural was at play. Soleil had instantly connected her with mythology. Hikari couldn’t believe that Soleil had jumped straight to it.   
Noir saw them watching him. He shrugged. “It’s very unusual.”  
“Very,” Winter acknowledged, “But we should focus on the case.”  
Noir nodded, “Fair enough.”  
Hikari tried not to show her relief. She didn’t like that her life had intersected Noir Soleil’s again. She wanted him far away from her work and her knowledge. That Ironwood had brought him in could only mean he had agenda. And his agendas were fatal to cross. Or perhaps this was his last bout of blood lust before old age subdued him.

Noir turned to the screen and said, “Let’s review Shadowcat and her involvement in all this.”  
Hikari didn’t see it. She shrugged. “Shadowcat’s on team RWBY. Maybe she’s just along for the ride.”  
Noir turned to face her. He hadn’t given her a look like that since Furburg. The look meant, “You’ve inherited a real mess, kid.”  
Out loud, he said, “I’ll assume you’ve read Crusade by now.”  
Hikari nodded. Noir pulled his scroll from his pocket and flicked it open.  
He asked, “Have you ever read Third Crusade?”  
“No.”  
Hikari held out her hand. Noir gestured the data from his scroll. She caught the glowing ball and pushed it into her own.  
“When you get the chance,” Noir sighed. “A faunus reactionary’s interpretation of Crusade and how we’ve strayed from it. In Crusade the gods told us not to build cities. The author of Third Crusade recognizes that cities were built so that the few could centralize power over the many. Our rulers traded our survival for their personal luxury. Of course, the author see it as a conflict between humanity and faunus. The point remains. On principal, if destroying a city costs a faunus their life, they have died for the legacy of the gods. Do not assume Shadowcat is passive.”  
Hikari nodded that she understood, then shook her head.  
“I don’t think she’s still a radical. All of our intel says she ran away from Taurus’ White Fang. She wanted out.”  
But Hikari didn’t have Winter’s support there.   
The Specialist scowled. “Both of her parents were White Fang. Her father died at Chernobyl, and you know what happened to her mother. Then she joined the White Fang under Adam Taurus, murdered two soldiers, and- need I remind you- knocked over a Schnee company train only two years ago.”  
She didn’t need reminding. She’d lost two friends on that train.   
Noir nodded his agreement. “As I understand it, the specialist tracking Shadowcat was misled by a tip from Beacon Intelligence. Ozpin took advantage of our trust to enroll her as a student. The treaty protects her now. And when she graduates, all of her crimes will be pardoned.”

Hikari knife-handed her disagreement. “That tells us that Ozpin trusts her. And I’ll remind you two that team RWBY just shut down most of the White Fang’s operations in Vale. Either the rest of them are genius investigators, or Shadowcat was helping them.”  
Noir turned to them, and slowly but forcefully walked into their personal space, to whisper so only the three of them could hear. 

They each received a severe glance. And then he addressed a memory hovering somewhere between them all. “Let me make this very clear to you. After what I did to Shadowcat at Chernobyl, she can never have a normal relationship in her life. She will never trust anyone. She will never be anything but an enemy to humanity. I should have killed her. I didn’t. And now she is a problem that we have to deal with.”

Hikari didn’t give him the pleasure of a reaction.   
But Winter nodded her agreement. “Shadowcat’s recent actions in Vale prove nothing. She was only dismantling Roman Torchwick’s control over the Fang. He’s human. Now that Torchwick is in our custody, her raids have stopped. But we know there are at least a thousand recruits in Vale. So her links to the White Fang are very real, and she could still be working with the Woman in Red to destroy the city.”  
Winter turned to Hikari and ordered, “We’re taking her in. With your leave, Mr. Soleil.”  
Noir nodded and returned to the main screen. Winter guided Hikari out of the room.

Hikari held her tongue and fumed. But she saw that Winter was walking them to a conference room. So she would have a chance to speak her mind. Winter took a seat at the head of the oval table, crossed her legs, and then gave Hikari her full attention.  
Hikari blurted, “A friendly is going to die if we waste time. Moving on Shadowcat doesn’t advance our mission.”  
“A friendly?”  
“Amber.”  
Winter shrugged. “We’ve never heard of her. We have all the time in the world.”  
“I think you’re letting grudges make decisions for you.”  
“Maybe. But it’s already in motion, Hikari. The leader of the shadow pact was captured last week. I had him released on the agreement that he recruits Blake Belladonna and kills Noir Soleil. The Shadow Pact will strike at Mr. Soleil tomorrow night. We will arrive too late to save him, but just in time to neutralize them.”  
Hikari blinked over the information. She gaped, “You had Umbra in custody? You want to- WHY?!”  
“Killing Noir Soleil was your idea, Hikari. You said he was evil.”  
“I didn’t say we should kill him!”  
“We won’t. Shadowcat will. And then we will arrest her.”  
“This is entrapment!”  
“It’s warfare,” Winter snapped.  
Hikari bared her teeth. “Our mission is to identify and neutralize the Woman in Red! Killing Soleil and capturing Shadowcat is completely unrelated! You’re doing this because of Weiss!”  
Hikari had never gotten a reaction from Winter before. The specialist swallowed. Her cheeks sucked in further. Her pupils contracted and she re-crossed her legs.  
“This has nothing to do with-“  
“You don’t like that Shadowcat and Weiss are on the same team! That’s all this is about! You’re risking our lives to advance your family’s agenda! This is typical SDC Bullshit!”  
She’d let too loose. Hikari paused to calm her breathing.  
She asked, “Back there you said we’d be questioning Shadowcat. What ever happened to that?”  
Winter shrugged. “Is that your objection, Hikari? Fine. We’ll take her alive.”  
She wanted a contest of egos. Hikari wanted a contest of reason. She frowned and held her arms out.  
“We can’t do this without casualties, Winter. If you want to take on a team of huntsmen, we’ll lose people. Statistically, at least three. And I don’t think we have a chance of catching the Woman in Red in time if we lose more than two. Do me a favor. Make a list of who you aren’t willing to lose.”  
Winter said, “I’m not willing to lose Weiss.”  
That was the admission Hikari was seeking. She nodded. “Okay. And after you violate the Vytal Compact, light up downtown Vale, and kill a student from Beacon, what are you going to tell General Ironwood?”  
She hoped this would dissuade the Specialist. Winter had an intense respect for Ironwood that usually made her reflect on things. But something about Vale had unsettled Winter. When Weiss had surprised her at customs, she’d slapped her younger sister as a greeting. Then she’d assaulted her ex, Qrow Branwen, in Beacon’s courtyard. Now she wanted to go faunus hunting. If the thought of Ironwood couldn’t reel her in, she was a single action away from going rogue. Hikari hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She hoped they had enough of a relationship that Winter wouldn’t push it that far.

The specialist understood how close she was to losing all authority. She took a very long time to think. Finally, she said, “If Blake Belladonna refuses to kill Noir Soleil, we do nothing. I’ll tell Ironwood that she isn’t a suspect in the case, and she isn’t White Fang. But if she does… Then she is.”


	22. Cobalt

Two Atlas marines, Steele and Cobalt, stepped onto Eidolon’s deck and returned an ensign’s salute. Cobalt introduced them, shouting over the high winds and ship thrusters.  
“He’s Lance Corpral Steel and I’m PFC Cobalt. We’re here to see the Fleet Commander.”  
The ensign, Neapolitan, had heterochromia. She nodded and guided them inside. Cobalt had never had occasion to discover his fear of heights. This was his first visit to an airwarship. He breathed relief inside the superstructure. But he didn’t slouch, for fear of rumpling his uniform.

That morning, Cobalt and Steele had spent two hours helping each other prepare their dress whites. Their Atlas uniforms were the very image of precision and perfection, though their medal stacks were almost barren.

They had a unit citation for escorting the paladins across the world, a mariner's proficiency badge for sitting on a boat for half of that journey, and combat service medals for getting shot at in the forest. Cobalt had an additional star on his lapel for curling into a ball and holding still while White and Orchid saved his life.

The star was a combat bravery citation. He was obligated by his dress whites to wear it. They stepped into Fleet Commander Gray's office.

Rumor put General Ironwood in this part of Remnant, but he'd been appointed StratCom Chief by the Council of Vale. Fleet Commander Gray had assumed the role of Actual for First Expeditionary while the General was busy.

Gray was a far more intimidating man. Steele and Cobalt stopped at his desk to salute, and Commander Gray returned it half-heartedly. "Gentlemen. Have a seat."  
Two chairs had been laid out for them. Steele and Cobalt took care not to crease their uniforms as they sat.

Commander Gray had a full desk: two dossiers, a message on the letterhead of the Special Retinue Service, and another letter sealed by the insignia of the Force Specialist Division. He looked these over like his table was crawling with bugs.

"You've applied for a transfer to the Special Retinue Service," he finally grumbled.  
He looked to the marines for confirmation.   
Steele nodded. "Yes, Sir."  
"Usually, I would have thrown that application in the trash, and we would never speak of it again. But I also keep hearing stories about my marines spending all of their spare time on extracurricular training. That, and I recognized your name."  
He pointed at Cobalt. “I worked with your father, Cobalt. At Chernobyl. Before Shadowcat killed him. Is that what this is about?”  
He waited. Cobalt leaned in to answer, "No, Sir. They were in mutual combat. Avenging that would just create a cycle of meaningless warfare."  
Gray nodded his approval.  
Cobalt added, “And if I understand correctly, he had it coming.”  
Gray stopped nodding. “It’s not my place to judge. Right. Where were we? Extracurricular training. I see that most of your division is now participating in the exercises that you two are organizing."  
"Yes, Sir," Steele nodded.  
Gray turned his palms up to ask, "So if it isn’t revenge… What made you two do this?”  
The marines saw a long scar along his right palm. They looked away from that, to each other, then back to Gray.  
"Well, Sir," Steele hesitated.  
Cobalt finished, "We met some soldiers… From the Special Retinue Service. On our way here, when we were escorting the paladins."  
Gray pushed their dossiers aside and brought the SRS letter to the center of his desk.  
"Winter’s Soldiers," he said. "Hikari."

They'd been inspired. It was in the midst of combat, surrounded by faunus and bullets. Her calm and focus had become their life goals. The exact moment for Cobalt was when he’d advanced too far.

He curled up behind a two-foot wide tree. Loud snaps kicked bark off of the trunk and spat dust around his feet. Steele and Hikari were in better cover ten-meters away. Cobalt had never felt more alone.

Hikari's voice calmed him down.  
"Cobalt! His name's Cobalt, right? Cobalt, I need you to call it. Where are they? No, don't look. Stay behind the tree. Did you see where they shot you from?"  
"They're in a foxhole!”  
“Where?”  
“There’s a ficus! They're under the ficus!"  
"Direction and Distance, Soldier!"  
Cobalt tried to keep his breathing steady and his elbows tight while he checked his compass.  
"Two-two-Null. Twenty meters."  
"Atta boy. Steele, how's your math?"  
"Isn't the Huntress gonna help us?"  
Steele pointed to Winter, her bored form idling atop the pale horse.  
"Yeah, she'll jump in if she needs to. Okay. Cobalt is ten meters off our One-Six-Null. They're twenty meters off his two-two-null. Do the math and put red smoke on them. White! Orchid! Grazing fire on red smoke!”  
"Wh- But..."  
"Hurry, Steele! They're gonna shoot your friend!"  
Steele fumbled a wind crystal into his under barrel launcher, and the formulas from combat school danced in his head.

They didn't remember the details, but twenty minutes later, the White Fang wasn't shooting. Cobalt and Steel were looking down their holo-sights at a pack of pre-teens holding rifles over their heads. Then past them, they were looking at adults dragging an anti-tank gun into position. Cobalt looked over his shoulder, to the paladin convoy, and realized what was going on.

Beside the convoy, a spectral horse stood riderless.

The anti-tank gun fired, and the huntress appeared before Cobalt, her saber splitting the round. Its two halves fell on either side of him. He blinked and the huntress was gone again. A sonic boom swept leaves and dust into the void. There was no second shot.

In Fleet Commander Gray's office, a long silence had fallen. Steele and Cobalt were thinking.  
"I guess..." Cobalt hesitated, "I just really think we'd be dead if it wasn't for them. And... They can't always be there. So... I wanted to be like her. Like, maybe I could be that soldier for someone else."

Steele nodded his agreement. "We want to be Winter Soldiers."  
It had been a very long time since Gray had laughed. He made a quiet, raspy sound, and his chest shook. But it was only for a second. 

"That's a long road over a steep cliff, Gentlemen. I'll be honest, here. I've granted you an audience because you two have demonstrated leadership and vision. These are good traits for a marine. I brought you here to talk you out of this."  
They waited, respectfully quiet.

"You were pretty young, Cobalt. Do you understand what happened at Chernobyl?”  
“Faunus labor strike went wrong. Reactor blew up. All the miners died.”  
Gray sighed. He shook his head. “It’s amazing the kind of things the Retinue can hide. What happened was a mass atrocity. Your father was pressganged by them. We all were. You’re doing good work in the military. You’re fighting Grimm. In the Retinue, they’ll ask you to do a lot of killing. As in people.”

Cobalt and Steele separated for a moment. They’d been inseparable since they met. But this kind of moral quandary had to be answered at the most individual level. Cobalt had always reasoned that there were two sides to every conflict.  
He asked, “But they have their reasons, right?”  
Gray nodded. “I suppose they do. If you have no moral qualms about the unit, consider your lives and your livelihood. I have twelve marines in my infirmary right now. Three months ago, a rogue huntress broke into Vale CCT and put them all down. Two are comatose, three are paralyzed, the others are rehabilitating from broken limbs. The fight lasted eight seconds. The suspect is a sixteen year old girl. This is what happens when a huntsman plays nice. And hunting huntsmen is what the Retinue does. On that point…"

He opened a drawer on his desk and pulled a notepad from it. He read aloud.

"Twenty percent of applicants die in training. Twenty percent of those selected for service will die within their first year. Fifty percent will die within their first five."

Steele and Cobalt were stoic in the face of those odds. They didn't look to each other for assurance.   
“We did our research, Sir,” Cobalt nodded.  
"Well then," Gray mumbled, "you should know that your applications have been sponsored by Agent Hikari, with an appended commendation from Specialist Winter."  
“Sir?” they said in unison.  
“You look surprised.”  
Cobalt shrugged, “Well... All I did is hide behind a tree and piss myself, Sir.”  
Gray nodded. “That’ll serve you well.”

After that meeting, on the shuttle back from the carrier, Cobalt pulled his scroll from his pack. He smiled at the long list of messages from his unit.  
“Steele, look. Everybody says we're cool.”  
“We're pretty cool,” Steele admitted.  
“You know, there’s a few hours left today. Gym?”  
Steele said, “I dunno, I was thinking hand-to-hand. Oh. You know what? Let's watch the tourney. I wanna see how huntsmen fight.”  
“Sure,” Cobalt shrugged.  
He tapped across his scroll while Steele retrieved his own.  
“Darn, just missed a match,” Cobalt hummed.  
"Oh. Who won?"  
"Looks like Yang Xiao Long beat Mercury Black."  
“Xiao Long. She’s that farm girl, right? Ring out?”  
“No. She broke his aura.”  
“Hot damn. That sounds like a real fight. Where’s Mercury from?”  
He looked over Cobalt’s shoulder. On the screen, Yang Xiao Long stood triumphant, arms raised to the crowd and shouting. Behind her, Mercury Black sat up, stood, rubbed what hurt, and dusted himself off.  
He walked to his opponent and extended a hand. Yang turned to look at him.  
Cobalt chuckled, “Doesn’t sportsmanship just warm the-“  
And then Yang cycled her shotgun vambraces and put a round through Mercury’s leg. The feed cut to color bars. Cobalt and Steele looked at each other.  
In unison, they said, “Holy shit.”


	23. What to do About Yang

General James Ironwood stepped into Ozpin’s office and shouted, “She’s dangerous!”  
The Headmaster looked up from his desk, to Glynda Goodwitch. She shrugged at him and folded her arms. They both turned to Ironwood.  
Ozpin answered, “Yang Xiao Long is firmly in my jurisdiction. Our primary concern right now is the destruction of Vale. Panic would only hasten that. We must maintain the appearance of normality throughout the city. So there will not be a single citizen of Vale taken into Atlas’ custody. Am I clear, General?”  
“Don’t bring that into this, Ozpin. Yang Xiao Long is not above the law. She belongs in mobile detention aboard Eidolon.”  
Glynda stepped in. “She belongs at Beacon, her Academy.”  
Ironwood dismissed her with a wave. “Raven is criminally insane and we know her traits are heritable. Yang is only going to get worse!”  
Glynda shouted, “She is not Raven!”  
They waited for Glynda’s echo to fade.   
Ozpin said, “We should withhold any further discussion until Qrow arrives. He is her legal guardian.”  
They waited. The elevator sounded, and Ozpin prepared for Qrow’s aggressive banter. But Branwen didn’t even look mad. He took his time crossing the room, sighed, and said, “I think we all saw the video.”  
He looked to General Ironwood. “A lot of bad vibes right now. What’re the monsters up to?”  
Ironwood’s scroll rumbled. He grumbled, “That’s the Fleet,” and flicked it open. “Commander Gray, I’m here with Headmaster Ozpin. You have an update?”  
Fleet Commander Gray nodded. “We detected agitation in Mountain Glenn, Odessa, and Forever Falls. None of the swarms stampeded, but Swarm Rancor altered course towards Vale and has occupied Mountain Glenn. Agitation ceased after ten minutes. Swarm Malice, from the north, will be in the Emerald Forest by tomorrow. We’ve lowered the DefCon back to Five. Threat level remains at three, but Rancor might be spawning in Mountain Glenn. If so, we’ll be at threat level four by tomorrow. We’re safe for now, as long as the media can keep everyone distracted.”  
Ironwood nodded, “Thank you. Keep me updated.” He flipped his scroll closed. “Ozpin, I understand that you want to protect your students. But you have to choose. How much harm does Yang get to cause before you act? If she becomes her mother-”  
“-Hold on Jimmy-“ Qrow interrupted, “Summer raised her. She’s not gonna be like Raven.”  
“How can you say that? The world is in desperate need of huntsmen, and she just mauled one for life!”  
Glynda unfolded her arms and scoffed. “He can get a prosthetic, James.”  
Ironwood didn’t often lose control of his emotions. He felt like he’d just been shocked through the whole right half of his body. As if every prosthetic in him were just attacked by those words. He took a moment to steady himself.   
He said, “It’s not the same.”  
Glynda hesitated, then nodded. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive.”  
Ironwood turned back to Ozpin. “Xiao Long needs to understand that there are consequences for her actions.”  
Ozpin looked to Qrow, as her Uncle and legal representative. Qrow was cleaning his teeth with his tongue. He didn’t seem to have a rebuttal.  
So Ozpin tried, “I believe that she learns best through her empathy. She cares very much about her sister, and about her teammates. They will keep her on the straight and narrow.”  
Ironwood balked, “Her teammates? You mean Blake Belladonna?”  
Qrow mumbled, “Here we go.”  
Glynda snapped, “We agreed not to argue about that anymore, James.”  
“This is different. Blackbird and Nightshade’s tendencies are heritable.”  
Glynda mouthed, “Blackbird and Nightshade.” She didn’t like the dehumanization.  
Ironwood didn’t care. “Blake and Yang clearly inherited those traits. Ozpin, do you honestly believe putting two killers together will reform them?”  
Qrow finally stepped in to assert something. “Three killers, Jimmy.”  
That brought a halt to everyone’s thoughts.   
Ironwood asked, “Ruby? Ruby’s a killer?”  
Glynda and Ozpin checked each other’s faces.  
Glynda asked, “What are you talking about, Qrow?”  
Qrow held up a finger for them to wait. He pulled out his flask and pulled liquor from it. The morning headache abated and he sniffed as if his nose has just woken.  
Then he said, “You’re all worried that Yang might grow up to be Raven. I’ve got news for you, Jimmy. Raven’s got nothing on Papa Schnee. If Weiss turns out anything like her father… A lot of people are gonna wish Blake offed her when she had the chance.”  
Ironwood bristled. “That’s different.”  
“I dunno, Jimmy. Maybe we should just get rid of all the kids. Their parents were awful people. Humanity might turn out the same as the last thousand years, you know?”  
Glynda said, “Let’s at least be serious, Qrow. But, I agree, not as serious as you’re being, James.”  
Ozpin announced, “I have a compromise.”  
Ironwood nodded that he would listen.  
“Grant Yang Xiao Long parole. We will act as her wardens. We will limit her weapons rights and restrict her to the academy’s grounds, which keeps her away from the general public. We can resolve legal conflicts at the end of the Vytal Festival. In the meantime, the public disturbance can be kept to a minimum.”  
Ironwood said, “Fine. But if she sets foot off of Beacon…”  
Ozpin agreed, “I understand.”  
There wasn’t anything else to say. So Ironwood spent his night aboard the carrier, staring at maps and receiving briefings on Grimm activity. He’d been asked once how he slept at night. Sometimes, he didn’t.

In his quarters, he found an old photograph of himself receiving a Captain’s lapels. He yearned for that simpler time. There were no sixteen year old assassins, no budding serial killers in his custody, no silver-eyed archons of wrath, nor Schnees mixed in with them.

He set the photograph back and looked at his robotic hand. He realized, those were the days that created these. Those days were in Chernobyl.


	24. Cirque Du Soleil

A young Captain named James Ironwood stepped out of a prefab structure and onto the Atlessian permafrost. His first battlefield commission was guard duty at a mining camp distant from the capital. The northern mountains sighed in his direction, sweeping his greatcoat and swaying the evergreens. He left a trail of footprints as far as the main road. His lieutenants fell in beside him and stood at attention.  
At the gates, guards safe’d their weapons and admitted a troop transport. James, in only two weeks as a Captain, had already failed his commission. His mining camp wasn’t producing. He’d feared replacement. Instead, the homeland sent a man from the Special Retinue Service, well versed in the problem of faunus labor strikes. The troop transport stopped before James’ welcoming party, and that man stepped out of the passenger door, cane first.  
James introduced himself. “Agent Noir Soleil? I’m Captain James Ironwood. Welcome to Chernobyl.”  
“No pleasantries, Captain,” the old man waved. “No time. Let’s get out of this cold.”  
More Retinue soldiers piled from the transport, unloading supplies. James and his lieutenants brought Soleil into the prefab command center. Noir Soleil accepted some coffee from an orderly, and then began speaking. “That mass of tents I saw- The laborers quarter there?”  
“Yes, Agent,” James nodded.  
“Are there any free rooms in the dormitories?”  
“Only one, Agent. I wasn’t informed of your platoon.”  
“We will construct our own shelter, Captain. But make that room ready. Do you know which of the faunus is leading the strike?”  
“There are several people we suspect, but it appears to be a distributed decision.”  
“It isn’t. Have them appoint a spokesperson, then bring him here. We still have three hours of daylight, yes? Let’s have him tonight. One other thing: Orderly, go outside and retrieve my dining accessories from the cargo truck. This room should accommodate us all.”  
Soleil waited for the orderly to leave, then snapped at James, “Well?”  
James turned to his Lieutenants. “Cobalt, prepare Agent Soleil’s sleeping arrangements. Gray, find the spokesperson from the laborers.”  
That left James and Soleil alone in the prefab. Soleil took a seat and put his feet up. He looked at the tack board, where a map of the camp’s surface hung beside a map of the immense caverns below.  
“You have a severe problem, Captain,” Soleil whispered.  
On training, James replied, “No excuse, Agent.”  
Soleil chuckled. “You misunderstand. You were stationed here to prevent further attacks by the White Fang. I see that the perimeter you’ve constructed is pristine. I take it the attacks have stopped?”  
“Yes, Agent. We believe our presence deterred them.”  
“Do you have a precise headcount of your workers?”  
“Ten thousand and seven-hundred. Give or take about twenty. We can’t record every death in the mines and every immigrant.”  
“And you have no Identification program for your workers. So the whole of the White Fang’s elite Shadow Pact could infiltrate your camp, and you would have no way of knowing who didn’t belong.”  
James understood then that he had a serious problem.  
“The faunus believe that you will make concessions to them in order to avoid losing your job. We, all of Atlas, are dependent upon them for their labor. Do you understand? We’ve given them power over us. These animals were our slaves, once. The things you own end up owning you.”  
Soleil sipped his coffee and kept staring at the map. James mumbled, “Their demands aren’t so unreasonable, Agent.”  
“I suspect that the White Fang commander, and all of his forces, are within this camp. He has the power, at this moment, to rally all ten-thousand and seven-hundred people against you and overwhelm your Division. That he hasn’t shows a lack of initiative.”  
“You aren’t a negotiator,” James realized.  
“Let me rest, Ironwood. Be ready for dinner when our guest arrives. And relax. Why do you look so worried? You are a young man with two capable hands and a commission as an officer. And for assisting me in solving this dire issue, I will accelerate your career in the Capital. There’s nothing for you to worry about, James. So don’t. Just do as I say… And survive.”  
James didn’t like his position. He dressed that night for what he knew could be his last. If Agent Soleil was right about the White Fang, or if he was wrong and provoked a riot, James would be the first against the wall. Relaxing wasn’t an option.   
But James had a totem to embody all of his hopes and dreams for the future. At the last Vytal Festival, he’d met his match in a young Vale Huntress. He tucked Glynda’s photograph into his heart pocket and returned to the command center to meet the faunus leader.  
Noir Soleil had renovated. The disgustingly luxurious accessories for his dining must have taken a large section of the truck. And he’d brought food from the homeland, fresh and kept warm. Noir Soleil sat at the head of the table, and the faunus spokesperson sat to his right. So James sat to his left.  
“I was just saying hello to Mr. Tukson,” Noir explained.  
James nodded hello. Tukson was some kind of cat hybrid, no older than twenty. He nodded meekly and kept his posture erect and polite. Their guest had manners beyond his station. James felt glad to see that Tukson was far more nervous than he.  
James followed Soleil’s lead. He didn’t speak out of line, he laughed appropriately at minor quips, and the meal was enjoyed in peace, in the formal style of humans from Atlas. Throughout, Tukson was able to keep pace and etiquette with Noir Soleil’s conversation about literature.  
Then Soleil very abruptly set his utensils down and admitted, “I am here for the Dust, Tukson.”  
Tukson swallowed his last food, and set his silverware down in the same pattern that Soleil had.  
“I am here for the rights of my kind,” he replied.  
Noir took a long time to look Tukson in the eye and examine his resolve.  
“I have good news for you,” he finally nodded.  
Tukson’s chest raised as he took a large breath of relief.  
Noir explained, “I am authorized to offer proper housing and two extra rations per person per day, in addition to medical treatment, educational programs, sick days- suffice to say that you all know full well that we need your labor and we must capitulate to your demands. There is one problem, a minor hiccup really.”  
Soleil paused to dab a napkin at his mouth. Tukson shivered.  
“The problem is that we can only extend these benefits to miners. And none of the faunus in this camp are mining anything. Your job is simple, Mr. Tukson. You must explain to the laborers that they will be provided with a living, provided that they continue to labor. More specifically, they have until tomorrow to produce two megatons of Dust. Otherwise, they are no longer employees of the Schnee Dust Company, and are therefore ineligible to receive benefits under any State programs.”  
He stared Tukson down until the faunus nodded his understanding. Tukson didn’t have a counter offer. He seemed stunned. James leaned in though, and offered his first comment.  
“Two megatons? That’s almost double the median daily output.”  
“Yes, well there’s lost time to make up for,” Soleil dismissed. “And if I have read your maps correctly, there is an exposed vein of that amount left uncollected due to the strike. The matter should be trivial.”  
Noir glanced to Tukson, who nodded his agreement.  
“I’m finished and very tired from my journey,” Soleil announced. “But feel free to enjoy your meal, Mr. Tukson. Also, feel welcome to sleep with us in the dormitories. A room has been made for you. Lieutenant Cobalt can show you to your quarters when you are ready.”  
Soleil left, and James only stayed long enough for an awkward exchange with the Tukson.  
“So… You like books?”  
“I do, Sir,” Tukson nodded.  
And that was that.

The next day ended in a similar dinner. Soleil sat at the table’s head. James sat at his left. Tukson sat at his right. Soleil remained civil and unpredictable. James remained fearful that assassins would overwhelm his forces. Tukson looked like he was facing the gallows. As dinner was served to them, Soleil began his conversation.  
“No Dust,” he said.  
“The equipment is sabotaged, Sir,” Tukson mumbled.  
“So I’ve heard. All of the keys to the drilling vehicles are locked up in a booby-trapped cage in the mine. As my demolitions expert explained, any attempt to blast through the cage will bring the cave down on it, and any attempt at opening the cage without the password to the keypad will trigger the booby-trap, bringing the cave down on it.”  
Tukson did not answer. He did not acknowledge his food.  
“Pity,” Soleil said.  
Tukson swallowed fear. He watched Soleil eat, as if waiting for a snake to strike. James tried to enjoy the meal, but his stomach was busy twisting. Soleil turned his conversation to James.  
“Captain, I have a brain teaser for you. Why did the laborers reject my offer?”  
James had no clever insights. So he spoke the truth as he saw it.  
“Maybe they didn’t believe you. When you said all of those things about new benefits… Was that true?”  
Soleil shrugged. “What is truth? They made their demands, and I capitulated. If they didn’t want to follow through, then what was the point of the demands? I matched a lie with a lie, James. Here is the Truth. This is not a protest against conditions. There is a White Fang commander within the ranks of the laborers, and he doesn’t want better conditions for workers. His objective is to deny the State of its strategic resources, the Dust from this mine. This is just another battle in the White Fang’s war.”  
He turned to Tukson.  
“How were you selected, Mr. Tukson? Surely there must have been a hundred nominees from ten-thousand to speak on behalf of the many. How were you chosen?”  
“T-there were a hundred of us, as you say, S-sir,” he stuttered.  
Tukson gulped and continued, “So we broke into groups of ten, and each group elected-“  
“Decimation,” Soleil summarized.  
“Yes, Sir.”  
“Good. You should eat, Tukson.”  
“I’m not hungry, Sir.”  
A distant boom startled everyone but Soleil.   
He said, “You will be.”  
James turned to Lieutenant Cobalt and nodded for him to investigate. As the lieutenant left, Soleil stood from the table and glared at Tukson from above.  
“I have a new offer for you to return with, Mr. Tukson. Tomorrow morning, we will ask for the White Fang leader to surrender. If they do not, we will then decimate you. One of every ten laborers will be elected for execution, and their replacements will be shipped in from elsewhere. This will repeat daily.”  
The door burst open for Lieutenant Cobalt. He panted, “Oh gods. The Retinue just destroyed the food stockpile. We have a riot.”  
The first bursts of gunfire echoed into the night. James turned to Soleil.   
Soleil shook his head. “The Black Suns are experts at crowd control. There is no worry. James, sit.”  
James had stood in alarm. He obeyed.   
Cobalt hesitated at the door and asked, “With your permission, Mister Soleil, Sir, Agent, I’d like to check on my son.”  
Soleil nodded for him to go. James found his tongue in outrage.  
“Agent Soleil, decimation is… The White Fang won’t be the ones decimated! You’re guaranteed to only kill innocents!”  
“Very astute, Captain. The White Fang will ensure that their operatives are never the ones elected for execution. Because the common faunus matters as much to the White Fang as they do to the Schnees.”  
“Then why-“  
“Because they need to understand that.”  
Tukson, his face wet with tears, choked, “I am the White Fang commander.”  
Soleil shook his head. “No. Of all the faunus in this camp, I am certain that you are in no way connected to the White Fang, Mr. Tukson.”  
The tears sprang from Tukson as he understood how powerless he really was. “S-sir, please. I am the-“  
“You should be happy,” Soleil snapped. “This food, your new quarters, luxurious dining and fine discussions about literature… It’s all meaningless to you, isn’t it? You threw it all away just now to save a hundred friends and ten-thousand strangers. So your virtue is your treasure. You should be happy because, in this camp, you alone are above reproach. Now, if you will not eat, go deliver my message.”  
On the third night, there was no conversation. Tukson refused to eat. James tried, but his conscience stayed his appetite. Ten-thousand souls were going a second day without food, bearing the cold in tents and praying that they would live to starve another day.   
“I must compliment the resolve of these faunus,” Soleil said.  
James looked down the table to his lieutenants. By their expressions, they understood, just as he did, that Soleil was holding every one of them hostage.  
On day five, James and Tukson ate like beasts. The meat was no longer fresh. It had a stringy, packaged, air dried texture, and lost its flavor whenever it got cold. Hunger had won. And James was familiar with a soldier’s diet. He didn’t complain. Soleil looked at them both contemptuously.  
“We’ve solved the food crisis for the laborers,” he hummed.  
James imagined that the mass-killings were a greater concern. Soleil held some steak aloft on his fork and grimaced at it.   
“Somehow I always knew…” he said, “that faunus would taste disgusting.”  
James did not eat again until the ninth day. Soleil held his morning lecture over the PA system. And then the White Fang leader surrendered.  
A cat-faunus in her prime, a head shorter than James, but with more pride left in her stature. Straight black hair draped down to her waist. She had an extra set of ears, feline, atop her head. As she stepped forward, the others sank to their faces in the mud until the whole congregation lay prostrate before her. When James secured her cuffs, she addressed him with her eyes. Her pupils were vertical slats. Her voice was soft and level.  
“Captain, I’m at the mercy of your honor.”  
James whispered his reply. “I’m sorry. But you are at the mercy of another. And he has no honor.”  
Soleil waited for them in the SRS camp. The retinue had erected their own fenced compound. Among those structures was a holding cell. The Retinue soldiers took their prisoner inside while Soleil, Tukson, and James met before it. Soleil did not look happy.   
He turned to Tukson. “Who is she?”  
“Khali Belladonna,” Tukson said.  
Soleil watched Tukson, as if reading him, as if checking his resolve as he had on that first night. He wrapped an arm around Tukson and brought the faunus too close for comfort.  
“That’s a very believable claim you’ve made, Tukson. But I don’t like it.”  
“I’m sorry, Sir,” Tukson shivered.  
“Because I’ve been assuming that ‘Little Bull’ was the White Fang commander in this area.”  
“I don’t know who that is, Sir,” Tukson said.  
“You call him Adam Taurus, Tukson. He’s very young, but these Bull faunus are extremely strong by the time they’re ten. I have many, many reasons to believe that Taurus is the commander here. But now you’re telling me that the woman I’ve just captured is ‘Nightshade.’”  
“That’s what I’ve been told, Sir.”  
Agent Soleil nodded. He patted Tukson’s back. “I know you want this awful business to end even more than I do. You can help it end faster, Tukson. Tell me what matters to her, more than anything in the world.”  
Tukson had run out of tears last week. He didn’t cry now. He didn’t even look like a man.  
He mumbled, “She has a daughter.”  
Soleil patted him again, then released him. “Good. Go find Lieutenant Cobalt. Tell him to bring me the child. Ironwood, come.”  
They entered the holding cell. Chained to the floor, Kali could only look them in the eye by tilting her head up uncomfortably. Soleil dragged a chair forward to hold her head in his lap.  
They both kept expressions of serenity. Context aside, they could have been father and daughter. Soleil told her a story.  
“I have two daughters, born a year apart from each other. Love is… A compulsion more powerful than hunger, or life. But you already know that.”  
It was here that Kali’s serenity faltered. She shook, then struggled. Soleil gripped her hair and held her in place.  
“My firstborn fell very sick at a very young age. I am a wealthy man, and I have spent seven years of agony keeping her from death. But… She is not truly alive. Her mother believes she perished. Her sister doesn’t even know she exists. I had no options, you see. I have been studying the nature of the soul. Its properties, its substance, its transference and even fabrication. Though that will require further study.”  
Here Soleil lost his serenity. To stay calm, he stroked her hair.  
“I can’t imagine the pain you are in. I don’t want to. I want you to feel my pain, Nightshade. You see, to keep her in this world with me, I needed miracles. I have made those miracles. I have torn the souls from living faunus and flopped them about at whim. The same principles govern human souls. That should console you as much as it did me. But I couldn’t bring myself to give her a body other than her own. I had to create another miracle. A body like hers, but without her flaws. Without her genetic diseases.”  
“So a new body was engineered. It’s almost complete. Two miracles, Nightshade, do you understand? Twice I’ve defied the gods. I can accept an eternity in Hell, but they cannot let her draw breath and then take her from me. You understand. I know you do.”  
“Now I have only one obstacle before me, Nightshade. I need more materials to complete the body. And to transfer her soul, I need energy. Lots of energy. Do you understand? Both of these things, materials and energy: Dust. I need the Dust, and that means I need the mine to function. There’s nothing you can do to stop me, Nightshade. I will kill every single faunus here and keep replacing you until I have the Dust. Don’t resist me.”  
His tears landed in her eyes.   
Blinking through them, she answered, “I don’t have the code.”  
“Who does?”  
“Adam.”  
“And where is Little Bull?”  
“He left.”  
“I can’t take your word for that.”  
“I know.”  
They were quiet, and only held each other’s company for a long time. Ironwood had been taught that torture was a game of psychological endurance. James did not feel that he was enduring. He did not feel the serenity that Belladonna kept showing. She broke their long silence.  
“I know you, Soleil. Your wife writes those beautiful poems in the letters we intercept. She’s famous, and she’s made you famous. Her prose has moved us through the hardest nights of winter.”  
“Yes, she’s… She’s inspired me to live more in these years than I would have in whole lifetimes without her.”  
He swallowed his sorrow and asked, “Do you… Do you happen to remember any of that prose?”  
Belladonna laughed as much as her starved frame and utter despair allowed. But it was a laugh at absurdity, void of bitterness, brief and joyful. And then she nodded and spoke from her heart.

“Oh, lover, how I linger on your kindness,  
As if sentiment and passion alone,  
Rationed, could nourish and keep my heart warm.  
“By day, hopeful, I await your return.  
By night, I light the stars that will guide you,  
To me, closer, to the peace in our home.  
“Though tossed by Fate and her Four Seasons I,  
Supplicant to your tenderness, await.  
Come to me soon, for you are my Remnant.”  
She finished with her eyes closed and her head at rest. Soleil had released his grip on her, had softened as James had never seen the man, nor ever would again. A loud knock ended that moment, and Lieutenant Cobalt entered with a young faunus, a girl who appeared almost human, save the extra set of cat ears, and the vertical pupils of her eyes. She was no more than four. She didn’t seem to understand the direness of her situation until she heard her mother weeping.  
“Thank you, Kali,” Soleil whispered.  
She sobbed, “Do what you must, Eclipse. We have never known you to be merciful. And I would think less of you as a father if you did not call upon every means at your disposal.”  
He gripped her hair, and snorted back his tears in preparation for work. He slipped brass knuckles onto his other hand and said, “Yes. Well… In for a Penny, in for a Pound.”


	25. Malice II

Autumn had come to Chernobyl. The first snowstorm was a wall building on the horizon. The wind howled. The whine of the reactor klaxon made it all feel like the final Fall. In an hour, everyone here would be dead and buried.  
Captain James Ironwood sprinted out of the dormitories with Lieutenants Gray and Cobalt flanking him. They were cut off crossing the road by the SRS truck. The Retinue skidded to a halt and Agent Noir Soleil leaned out the back to shout.  
“Ironwood! You’ve done fine. Some things just can’t be helped. We’re leaving now. You and your officers should come back to Atlas with us.  
Cobalt asked, “Can I bring my son?”  
Soleil nodded, and Cobalt abandoned Ironwood. Lieutenant Gray wasn’t so quick to desert.   
He hesitated, then said to Ironwood, “I’m with you, Sir.”  
And here Ironwood had a problem. Because he desperately wanted to live. But he didn’t want to leave the miners.  
He decided, “I can manage the evacuation without you, Gray. Get on board.”  
He pulled the lieutenant closer and whispered, “Don’t let them Snowblind this.”  
He pushed Gray to the truck and turned to leave.   
Soleil shouted. “Don’t throw your life away, Captain! You have a place in the capitol. All you have to do is survive.”  
He answered, “I’m not like you.”  
The Agent nodded his acceptance. As farewell, he said, “Be what you must. Best of luck.”  
Ironwood reached the command center and found his engineers scrambling over analog outputs and paper schematics of the reactor.  
He ordered, “Someone tell me how we fix this.”  
Schwarz Schnee ranked in engineering.   
He shook his head. “We can delay it long enough to escape. Here’s how.”  
Ironwood stood beside him. Schwarz pointed to a map of the tunnels.   
“The super-reaction is inside the core of the reactor. If we open the reactor and remove the sarcophagus, it should be light enough for six people to carry. The nearest inert borehole is right here. If we drop the super-reaction down it and bury it, we’ll have a few days before it spreads to the vein. We’re talking them through opening the reactor core right now.”  
He gestured to a huddle of engineers at the radio. One spoke, his voice flat and enunciative.  
“Now pull the green lever towards you.”  
James squinted. “Schwarz, anyone who goes near that reactor while it’s open will be dead within an hour.”  
“They only need twenty minutes.”  
“Schwarz, look at me! Those are people down there! I know your solution’s cheap and easy, but if there’s a way to stop this-“  
That sent the man off his leash. Schwarz snarled, “This mine is a tenth of my family’s net worth! If there was a way to save it, I’d damn well be doing it, Ironwood! If you aren’t helping here, get out!”  
James sprinted to the motorpool. He needed his enlisted men to see that the officers hadn’t abandoned them. He shouted orders to no one in particular, to make himself heard.  
“Everything you can’t mobilize in ten minutes gets abandoned! We’re short on time here. Account for fuel first, people second, and anything else last!”  
He left that place and ran past the mine entrance, the primary borehole, where two great blast doors from the great war covered a circular elevator shaft for heavy equipment. Glancing down the hole, he saw the elevator platform rising.  
He kept running, to the SRS encampment. They’d left everything standing. Even Kali’s child sat in her cage. She, Blake, had been the fulcrum of the faunus’ compliance. She was the collateral by which Soleil had extracted his two megatons of Dust. A pile of carved wooden totems surrounded her, where miners had tossed them over the fence as gifts.  
James tore the fence down through force of adrenaline. The lock on her cage was stronger. He pried at it with a crowbar until his aura burned over his greatcoat like the aurora borealis. The crowbar snapped.   
Blake didn’t react. She looked pale as snow, still as ice, her hair black as night. For all he knew, she’d already died of the Retinue’s neglect. James only had time for survivors.   
He left her and ran back to the mine entrance, where the elevator had jammed just short of the surface. That wasn’t the only malfunction. One blast door had jammed closed in the most recent snow. He lay prone on it and reached his arm down.  
The whole platform had only five people on it. Khali Belladonna stood at their head. All reason had left Ironwood. And with it, all suspicion. He stretched his arm down and shouted, “Make a ladder! I can pull you up!”  
They were quick and organized, like soldiers. He pulled Belladonna up, and she joined him in helping them. Ironwood thought he’d have to explain the last man dilemma. Because the last man climbing out would have to climb the back of the second to last man before he comes up. When they performed it without communicating, his reason finally caught him. And he realized, they aren’t like soldiers. Beladonna stepped on his back, and one of the Shadow Pact jabbed the barrel of a Ballistic Chain Scythe into his side.  
Beladonna murmured, “Don’t shoot him yet. Verdan, send the elevator back.”  
The platform lurched and lowered again, down into the deep. Beladonna crouched beside James.  
He panted, “I’m on your side. I just want people to escape.”  
But he found no sympathy in her feline eyes. On this closer inspection of her face, he realized the full extent of Noir’s destruction. Belladonna no longer had a second set of ears atop her head. Clotted blood matted her hair there. He could no longer appeal to the humanity of this faunus. He was speaking now to the animalism of a human.  
She said, “We aren’t like you. We do not escalate. We return an eye for an eye. You didn’t do this to us, Ironwood. But you had the power to save us.”  
“Soleil would have had us all killed!”  
“He commanded a force of twenty men. You commanded over a hundred. It is too late to feign weakness. You left us to die. And we’ll leave you.”  
She knuckled him between the shoulder blades. He felt cold where her aura pierced him, bruising the spine and immobilizing his legs and pushing his lungs closed. He gasped, for air, for the pain to stop, for the nightmare to end. The real terror about this moment was that he’d seen this pitiful and hopeless kind of death before.  
He was just another white coat laid to rest in the snow. He’d meant nothing to the world.   
The Shadow Pact’s footsteps faded under howling wind and the rumble of trucks. He heard wheels rolling on the permafrost behind him, ferrying away men car-by-car. He could see them looking at him on the ground. Not one stopped to save him.  
His only hope for rescue was the flickering shadows in the mine. He saw bodies piling onto the elevator. Then the mechanisms engaged, and the machine slowly pulled that writhing mass of despair towards him.   
He clung to that hope. Even when heat and light rushed up through the mine. Even through a great crash, as the snowstorm cleared the trees- even looking up into the wall of nature just before it buffeted him. The white fury obscured everything. He couldn’t see the length of his own arm. But he reached down and hoped that someone would reach back.  
Something grabbed his arm, not for purchase as a person climbing him would. It tugged. It pulled him, so that half his body dangled over the blast door and his head fell below the snows.  
The mass on the elevator had begun as ten-thousand faunus, all climbing each other and reaching desperately for the surface, all swearing their revenge and screaming their curses upon the cities of men. Ironwood saw them now and thought: if only they could die.  
For Noir had truly stripped them of their identities as faunus. And the exposure to so much burning Dust had stripped them of all other humanity. As the warmth of that ethereal fire engulfed them, their forms and their fury merged until the whole mass was a single creature of ill will- a goliath, its trunk still screaming as a person but merging into the whole and pulling Ironwood down.  
In James’ last moment, he looked into the burning, red eye of Goliath Malice. Its screams invaded his mind.  
The light reached the blast door, passed through the uncovered half of his body, and James Ironwood joined in the scream.


	26. Yang alone

Yang Xiao Long sat on her bed beside Blake. Across the room, Ruby and Weiss sat together. Everyone stared at her.   
Ironwood had just explained her legal status.   
It was all too awkward. She didn’t want to sit with her friends and be so wrong. But she was.  
Blake, at least, had relaxed after Ironwood left. Ruby and Weiss still stared at her with wide eyes, as if expecting an explosion.   
Yang felt hungry. She felt naked without the weight of her shotgun gauntlets.  
Blake saw her rubbing her wrists and asked, “They took Ember Cecilia?”  
“I’m not allowed to have my weapons without supervision.”  
“And you’re not allowed to leave the school,” Ruby mumbled.  
“That… Really sucks,” Weiss tried to sympathize.  
Weiss and Ruby had as much social experience put together as Zwei. The corgi hopped up onto the bed and sat in Yang’s lap.  
Blake, as she’d been doing all day, stared at the clock. Yang couldn’t help but feel that they all just wanted to leave her there. Everyone in Vale hated her now because they saw her break Mercury Black’s leg for no reason. No one, not uncle Qrow, not General Ironwood, not even her own sister, could believe that Mercury attacked her first.  
And why would they? There were videos, eyewitnesses, by the millions. She’d seen it from ten different angles in High Definition on Blake’s scroll. Without a doubt, either she was crazy, or everyone else was.  
She suggested to Blake, “Don’t waste the day on account of me.”  
Blake nodded distractedly. “Yeah, actually, I uh… I have to go... To a thing.”  
Yang tried not to react. Blake left her side, and she didn’t reach out, or cry, or show any sign of loneliness. Her problems were hers alone. She didn’t want to be a burden, not like she’d been to Summer and Ruby.  
Weiss asked, “Where will you be, Blake?”  
“Just… Out,” Blake said.  
The door clicked shut behind her, and Yang sat awkwardly with Ruby and Weiss.  
Weiss said, “W-well, we can all just hang out today. We’ll make it a party.”  
Ruby whispered, “We signed up for that thing today, Weiss.”  
Weiss’ eyes bulged. “Oh… Right. The Field Day Drills.”  
Yang sighed. “Just go.”  
She didn’t watch them leave. She’d been excited when Ruby and Weiss were accepted into the drills. She wanted to still be excited. She felt resentment. She’d failed her team, her whole academy, in the tournament, and now they wanted nothing to do with her.  
This dormitory had been the sanctuary she retreated to for almost a year. Now it was just a cell in her prison. She needed air. Autumn in Vale had a sobering snap of cold in every gust. Walking down the school’s promenade, to the cliffs, she knew the season had really come into swing. A tide of leaves rolled through her like a wave at the beach. Her breath frosted in the air. She shivered. A patrolling Atlas marine sighed, “Gods, I missed the cold.”  
She heard Nora running at her from behind. The stomp-like footfalls gave it away. She reached Yang and placed a hand on her shoulder.  
“Hey there, Lady Smash.”  
“Hi, Nora. I don’t think it’s funny.”  
“Boy, you sure welcomed him to Vale, huh?”  
Yang turned to show Nora her face, that she wasn’t enjoying joking about it.  
“Oh. Well, uh, I just wanted to say hi. Ren and I are doing the Field Day thing with the soldiers. It’s a daaaaaaaaaaa-ate.”  
“It’s probably not a date.”  
“It’s not a date,” she admitted.  
“But I hope you have fun, Nora.”  
“Thanks.”  
Yang turned to leave.  
Nora shouted, “Wait! Have you seen Pyrrha? She didn’t come back to the room last night, and Jaune said she’s not acting like herself!”  
“It’s probably nerves,” Yang mumbled.  
She didn’t turn back. She left Nora, and didn’t stop walking until she’d reached the abandoned chapel near the cliffs. She looked out over the harbor, the docks, the ocean, Vale, the great curve of Remnant, the morning sun shining across the whole expanse. The beauty didn’t move her. She hated herself. She thought, maybe people shouldn’t have to leave her. Maybe she should leave.  
And immediately, as if she’d jumped up from a nightmare, everything that made Yang, Yang objected. She would never leave Ruby. She would never leave Blake. She would rebuild everything she had broken.  
She turned in to the chapel and came face to face with Pyrrha Nikkos.  
“Oh,” they both said.  
Yang pursed her lips. She looked away. She said, “Uh…”  
Pyrrha offered, “I was just leaving, if you want to be alone.”  
“I don’t,” Yang said.  
She’d thought of it as an admission. It sounded like a cry for help. She felt worse, seeing Pyrrha seize on that in her impossibly generous way.  
She offered, “You could talk to me, if you want.”  
“No, I don’t-“  
“Please,” Pyrrha begged.  
Yang understood. They were at their lows together. Pyrrha probably wanted to talk about Jaune. But Yang felt good about that, because at least she wouldn’t have to hear more judgment.  
“I guess we should get inside,” Yang breathed.  
They huddled near the altar, beneath a stained glass image of an ancient warrior woman. She bore the sigil of Mistral on her shield. Pyrrha looked at her the way she looked at Jaune. And like a bolt of duh, Yang realized that Pyrrha dressed like her.  
Yang asked, “Who is she?”  
Pyrrha perked up. Yang had bitten into a long conversation.  
“You don’t know?”  
Yang shook her head.  
“This is Athena Polis, the Lady of Mistral.”  
“Their… God?”  
“Well, no. Athena Pallas was one of the gods. This warrior took her name, Athena, and created the city of Mistral. There are chapels to her all over Remnant, usually by locals wanting to honor some deed. She had a band of adventurers.”  
Those were the women in stained glass, lining the pews along the whole length of the building. Yang saw one that looked vaguely like Blake, if Blake dressed like Pyrrha. She smiled at it. Another looked too similar to Raven: purple eyes, black hair, devilish smirk. She didn’t want to think about her mother.  
Pyrrha, still smiling at Athena’s image, hummed, “I like the craftsmanship.”  
Yang nodded. Her mirth and her smile dissipated. “I usually come here to be alone.”  
“Me too,” Pyrrha admitted.  
“Funny we never see each other.”  
Pyrrha met her eyes. “Well, I’m usually here at the beginning of the week for meditation.”  
“And I’m here at the end, to unwind.”  
“And here we are together, in the middle,” Pyrrha finished.  
“Tough week,” Yang surmised.  
“There’s someone…” Pyrrha began.  
Yang thought, “Here we go.”  
“I met someone else here,” Pyrrha said, “and we had an interesting conversation.”  
Yang knew Pyrrha would come around. For now, all she could do was perk up and ask, “What about?”  
Pyrrha looked at the room’s center and answered, “Destiny.”  
Yang had expected something emotional and relatable.  
She shrugged, “I don’t believe in Destiny.”  
Pyrrha shook her head, as if Yang had just dunked her under water.  
She stammered, “Y-you, what?”  
“I don’t believe in Destiny. I choose my own Fate. I make decisions, and I do my best. And if I didn’t, the outcome would change.”  
“Oh. Right. No, I didn’t mean pre-determinism.”  
“What did you mean, then?”  
“Destiny is a goal. It’s something you work toward your entire life.”  
“Oh. Well then not everybody has a destiny. But you definitely do, Pyrrha.”  
“Right. But I’m worried that…”  
“You’re not gonna fail, Pyrrha.”  
“No. Not that. What if you worked very, very hard for something for your whole life, and then you found out that you could never have it? Or, even worse, what if you found out that it was free? All of your effort was pointless?”  
Yang monotoned, “I guess I’d have an existential crisis.”  
But Pyrrha didn’t have a taste for dark humor.   
She asked, “Yang? Suppose nothing is predetermined.”  
“Okay.”  
“I have to be me. Just like you have to be you. When push comes to shove, and you have to choose between dying proud or bending to survive, we die. We die of ego.”  
Yang thought it through.  
She said, “It’s better to die that way than to live without identity.”  
Pyrrha nodded, “That’s what I said.”  
“To who?”  
“Professor Oobleck. But he said ego is so abstract that it is absurd.”  
“Ego is absurd?”  
“That’s what he said.”  
“Isn’t Professor Port, like, his best friend?”  
“Just hear out the argument, Yang. I need you to help me explain why it’s wrong.”  
“Okay.”  
“He said that, on a fundamental level, everything is pre-determined. So my ego, my compulsion to be me, and the me defined in that compulsion, were all out of my power. ”  
Yang had found the limit of her participation in the conversation.   
She mumbled, “Uh… Okay?”  
Pyrrha licked her lips and tried again. “So… When you put two magnets near each other, what happens?”  
Yang pantomimed with her hands, “They snap together.”  
“Right. They have to. That’s… Those are the rules of nature. The magnets don’t choose.”  
“But magnets aren’t people. People choose.”  
“Well… Here’s another example. Let’s say there was a clerical error, and Blake Belladonna and Sun Wukong got put in a room together. The school would just be asking for trouble, right?”  
Yang didn’t answer. She felt a burning coal in her gut that she’d never had to deal with before. Jealousy was exactly as Uncle Qrow had described.  
“Uh… I-I don’t think…”  
“Chemistry is Chemistry. It’s just like the magnets.”  
“No, it isn’t! People are responsible for their own actions, Pyrrha!”  
“In legal, and social, and political concepts. But in reality, do people have control over their own actions?”  
“Of course! Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.”  
“Let’s go back to the magnets.”  
“Why? People aren’t-“  
“Yes, we are! That’s the point, Yang! Chemistry is like the magnets. Chemistry has rules. Chemicals don’t get to choose. And a person, a brain, is just chemicals. So anything that comes out of that complex can only be a product of those deterministic interactions!”  
Pyrrha stopped and leaned back into her own space. “Sorry.”  
Yang parsed the big words together, to make sure she understood. She saw Pyrrha cringing in pain at what she was presenting. It really was tough to argue against.  
“Okay, but, Pyrrha, what about the soul?”  
“That doesn’t solve the problem, Yang. A soul has rules. A soul is a discrete entity, right? It is one thing and it isn’t anything else. And who you are flows as a direct consequence from what your soul is. So the soul is deterministic, too. So you are just a product of the moments preceding you. And that means that the future must be what it will be. In other words, what will be, already is.”  
“But it hasn’t happened yet.”  
“But it will! And I’m scared!” Pyrrha covered her mouth, eyes wide. She swallowed and looked away.   
Yang understood that she was damn well lost in this conversation. “Uh… What exactly are we talking about?”  
Pyrrha wouldn’t meet her eyes again. She mumbled, “I think I’ve said enough. Can we talk about your problems now?”  
Yang nodded. “Uh, sure. Yeah. Well, you already know about my problems.”  
Pyrrha nodded and hugged her knees to her chest. She asked, “Why did you do it?”  
Yang quipped, “’Cuz I’m a bag of chemicals?”  
Pyrrha was catching on to the dark side of humor. She smiled, though her eyes watered.  
“But seriously. When I was on that stage, I turned around to wave at the crowd, and I heard him threaten me. I said, ‘better luck next time.’ And he said, ‘there won’t be a next time.’ And then I heard him cock his weapon and lunge at me. And when I turned around, I saw him throwing a high kick at me. So I ducked and shot his other leg.”  
Yang glanced at Pyrrha, to look for a reaction: sympathy or rejection. Pyrrha kept staring at the room’s center.  
Yang huffed, “look, I know there are hundreds of videos from every angle and thousands of eyewitnesses. I’ve seen it. But I’m telling you, I know what I heard and I know what I saw. He was going to-“  
“I believe you.”  
“You what?”  
“I said I believe you, Yang.”  
“Why?!”  
“Because… Well, you’d have to be really dumb to say that if it was a lie,” Pyrrha mumbled.  
She finally turned away from her focus and smiled at Yang playfully.  
Yang held out her arms, flabbergasted. “But I don’t have any proof! You’d have to be even dumber to believe it!”  
Pyrrha laughed. And Yang couldn’t help but laugh with her.  
Their moods sorted, they passed the day on that cliff, watching in distant fields as the military carried out their exercises and evaluated their readiness. The Vytal Tournament had been postponed for a day, to reorganize the event around future Yang-like incidents. In the afternoon, as the sun waned against the sea, Pyrrha resumed her look of foreboding about her vague and dire secret. She stood and walked, and Yang walked with her.  
Pyrrha held her shoulders high and tight, still tensed by her problems.  
She said, “Suppose everything is predetermined.”  
Yang asked, “Like magnets?”  
“No. Suppose there’s a designer.”  
“Like God?”  
“Yeah. Like one of the gods. And everything, people included, is just carrying out a program. If that’s the case, then we’re no different from automatons.”  
Yang snickered, “Like that girl from Atlas?”  
“Who?”  
“Penny.”  
Pyrrha laughed, then corrected herself. “That’s… Well, that’s rude. But I’ll admit she has some robotic habits,” Pyrrha giggled.  
Yang prided herself on lightening Pyrrha’s mood. It ended quickly.  
Pyrrha continued, “My point is, if we’re like magnets, and we can’t choose, then why do I have to experience this? Why do I have to be part of this play? All I can bring to the table is my suffering.”  
“Well now, come on.” Yang nudged her. “Life’s not all bad, right?”  
“No. No, there were some wonderful moments,” Pyrrha admitted.  
Yang had a deeply relieving sense of perspective. Pyrrha’s problem was worse than hers.  
“But…” Pyrrha said, “I had a plan for my life. I wanted to be like Athena and her Maidens.”  
Yang looked back through the distance they’d walked, at the chapel. She wore her confusion plainly, and Pyrrha smiled, “Can I tell you the story?”  
“Sure.”  
“You might think it’s silly. It’s just a fairy tale.”  
“If it made you, you it’s nothing to laugh at, Pyrrha.”  
“Well… Thank you.”  
“The story.”  
“Yes. There once was a woman from the swamplands who became the Fall Maiden.”  
“Wait, like, from the story of the Four Maidens?”  
“Yes.”  
“Is this a sequel?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“I thought fairy tales don’t mix.”  
“They don’t in Vale. In Mistral, all of our stories are related.”  
“That’s so cool. Okay, continue.”  
“Well her name was Athena. She assembled a band of the best young women she knew, so that she could lead them by example in the virtuous use of power. She called it The Better Path. She led her band on great adventures through Mistrals swamps and Vacuo’s sands and Vale’s glades, protecting the weak and vanquishing Grimm and spreading knowledge of crafts to every land they visited. In Mistral, they cultivated a certain apple tree that you can still find planted across the whole continent in the trail of their journeys! Or, so the story goes.”  
By Pyrrha’s excitement, Yang could tell she took some parts as true.  
“That’s a nice story,” Yang said.  
Pyrrha blurted, “It’s actually kind of long, now that I think about it. The point is, they were all killed.”  
“What?”  
“They didn’t believe people should idle in cities. So they never built walls or even houses. Because the Grimm are drawn to lethargy and waste. Grimm seek the darkest parts of humanity first. The gods charged us with constant expansion. We were meant to fill the stars. But, because Athena’s Maidens were not under the power of Kings and Queens, they were killed.”  
“Why?”  
“Tyrants cannot allow freedom. Not even independence. In the stories we tell in Mistral, the cities were founded by tyrants.”  
“But Mistral’s a city.”  
“Kind of. Well, it is, now. It still has some uniquely spartan features. We don’t have a wall, like the other cities.”  
“Really?”  
“Well… It’s complicated. We have many natural barriers. But to maintain the perimeter, we rely almost entirely on patrols.”  
Yang stopped, and Pyrrha stopped to see why. They’d reached the air shuttle dock, the line marking the academy’s jurisdiction. Pyrrha took another step, and was in the emerald City of Vale. A shift of marines idled in the waiting area. One pointed to Yang, and they all unslung their laser rifles to low ready. Pyrrha saw them, then looked back to Yang and realized, “Oh. I forgot.”  
Yang shrugged.  
Pyrrha looked back to the city. “I… I’m meeting my team.”  
“It was good talking, Pyrrha. And, you know what? Don’t let this whole Athena Fall Maiden thing get to you. It’s just a fairy tale, right?”  
She didn’t like the answer in Pyrrha’s expression. The Mistralite girl cringed, as if in pain, and lied, “Yeah. No, you’re right. Have a nice night, Yang.”  
And then she quickly turned and left. The walk back to the dorms took her along the Cliffside. The ocean breeze made her shiver. In the distant fields past downtown Vale, she saw vehicle headlights and infantry rifle lamps roaming in the dark. Ruby and Weiss would be at the Field Day drills till midnight. So she knew she had the room to herself. Or, hopefully, to herself and Blake. That hope danced within her when she opened her door.  
But she was alone. She deflated, and all posture collapsed without a need to present herself. Blake’s notes lay scattered across her bed. That wasn’t normal. Blake kept everything tight and tidy.  
She spotted a bump under the covers. It rolled up to the bed’s head, and out from under popped Zwei.  
The dog startled, chased his tail in three circles, and jumped up onto Blake’s notes so he could bounce and bark.  
Yang groaned.  
Zwei nudged a paper towards her and placed his paw on it.  
She folded her arms. “Zwei, NO! Did you get these out? You’re not supposed to touch Blake’s things! You know that! Where did you even get these from? How am I supposed to put these back?”  
She snatched the paper from under him. Blake had a complicated note-storing system that involved writing on bookmarks and reorganizing them as mnemonic references. This kind of dog sabotage would throw her off for weeks if it wasn’t put back right.  
She skimmed over the page. It looked like a biography. But everything was printed. She hadn’t written on it yet. Yang stared at the portrait. General James Ironwood. They weren’t studying him in any classes this semester.  
And then Yang understood. She wasn’t holding a biography. She was holding a dossier.

WHO: James Ironwood  
WHAT: Chief of SRS  
WHEN: irregular hours at night  
WHERE: Eidolon, Deck three, aft, State quarters  
WHY: Chernobyl.  
NOTE: First attempt failed.

Yang picked up another page, another dossier.

WHO: Azure Cobalt  
WHAT: Atlas Infantry Captain, Ret.  
WHEN: Midnight  
WHERE: 10 Axiom Ave. Sky District, Atlas.  
WHY: Chernobyl  
NOTE: Completed. 

Another. Schwarz Schnee. Completed.  
Another. Fleet Commander Gray. Postponed.  
She found the last one. And there she stopped.

WHO: Noir Soleil  
WHAT: The Devil Himself  
WHERE: Downtown Vale, Atlas Embassy Plaza

Blake had circled the when. Yang looked at the clock: twenty minutes.  
Out the window, two Atlas soldiers stopped their patrol to look up at Yang’s window, as if to remind her that they were watching.


	27. Midori

Midori stepped off of her shuttle, onto the carrier Eidolon, and had no idea what to do next. She still felt the chill of Atlas in her bones, lingering from two days ago, when she’d planted a flag atop Peak Thirty-Three, taken her oath, and claimed her place in the Special Retinue Service. Now, she was one of The Winter Soldiers. She’d been on a carrier before. She knew better than to wander on the flight deck.  
An ensign from the Fleet ran out to meet her, and Midori returned the short girl’s salute. She read the ensign’s nametag, and shouted to be heard.  
“Neopolitan? Nice to meet you. Where do I find Specialist Winter?”  
Neopolitan pantomimed something about not hearing. The high winds and thin air weren’t conductive to talking, so Midori followed her wave and walked with her down the carrier’s side. Vertigo had been a fear she’d overcome on Mount Blue Balls. She clutched the guard railing and descended the stairs on Eidolon’s hull to the hangar deck. Through the perforations in the steel steps, she could see Vale waiting to catch her if she fell.  
Down in the cargo deck, she spotted Force Specialist Winter Schnee- The Legend- standing beside her personal tiltjet. She looked like a statue, stiff and overbearing. Around her, The Winter soldiers scrambled into their combat gear and checked weapons.  
Winter’s gaze swept over them as if inspecting presentation. Damn, though, they really did look like professionals. Midori waved a goodbye to ensign Neopolitan and jogged to report for duty.   
It seemed a fine time for an introduction. Midori dropped her duffel bag and saluted.  
“Good morning, Specialist! Midori, reporting for service.”  
Winter turned a contemptuous glare to her. Her eyes turned down to Midori’s boots, then scanned up, flinching over some flaw on her pants, then skipping up to her eyes. That single failure had concluded the analysis.  
Winter turned away, to shout, “Agent!”  
Hikari Oni hopped from the craft, combat helmet covering her eyes, and black armor covering the rest of her. She looked Midori over.  
“You the Rook?”  
“Yes, Agent.”  
“What are you doing, Recruit?”  
“I’m saluting Specialist Schnee, Agent.”  
“If I catch you saluting a huntsman again, you’re out of my unit.”  
Midori dropped her salute. “Sorry, Ma’am, I-“  
“Agent.”  
“Ma’am?”  
“A-gent,” Hikari enunciated.  
“Sorry, Agent. I thought… Uh…”  
Hikari scowled at her hesitation. “You thought what?”  
“I thought only the Black Suns refused to salute huntsmen.”  
“I got my Agency in the Black Suns.” Hikari held out a hand. Midori shook it.  
Hikari retracted very quickly. “We’re deploying. Not you; I’m handing you over to The Wing today. See that plane?”  
She pointed down the deck’s taxi system. The next craft in line was a Borealis Class sub-orbital strike bomber. Midori felt a high like only a near-death experience could bring. Being this close to such a perfect machine never got old.  
Hikari said, “Strap up and find Major Coal on the bridge. You’re handling his weapons systems today. You’ve got your Merlot System certs, right?”  
“Yes, Agent.” She nodded to Winter. “Specialist.”  
Winter didn’t acknowledge her.   
Midori ran to comply. She’d never felt so jilted and so excited at the same time. Her flight suit was in the duffel bag, so she stopped and ran back to grab it. Up on the bridge, she found Major Coal at Flight Control. They had a map table displaying Vale and Mountain Glenn.  
Major Coal extended a hand black as anthracite to her. He spoke around an unlit cigar. “Agent Midori? Major Coal.”  
“Just Midori. Nice to meet you, Major. You wouldn’t happen to be related to Flynt Coal in the tournament?”  
“Fruit of my loins.”  
The best thing about the military was the men. She hesitated in the banter, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. No, it was in a ponytail. She didn’t need to.  
She stuttered, “U-uh, sorry about your Dust business. Getting run out by the Schnees, I mean.”  
Coal tilted his head, as if pained on her behalf. She felt like an idiot.   
The Major smiled. “Flynt was just trash talkin’ for the cameras. There’s no hard feelings between me and the Schnees. Midori, this is Fleet Commander Gray.”  
He turned the conversation with a wave.  
Gray was a far more serious man, married either to warfare or a woman who demanded stricture. His introduction was the quiet assertion of a handshake.   
Then he pointed at the map table. “We have two Swarms closing on Vale. Swarm Rancor has occupied Mountain Glenn, following Goliath Malice’s historical path. Before they became Alpha Goliaths, Malice and Rancor were twins spawned from Swarm Fürcht, so this coordination is noteworthy.”  
Gray gestured the map to the background, and brought a satellite photo from atlas to the foreground.  
“This pack used to be swarm Malice. Two weeks ago, the Retinue ambushed them in the Death Straits.”  
Major Coal waved a question: “Where?”  
Midori jumped at the chance to redeem herself: “Twenty klicks west of Mantle. Ley line flows through a canyon there. We use it to practice elastic defenses against Grimm swarms.”  
Gray continued. “After a thorough decimation, the swarm routed and skipped off the board. At that time, the swarm had no goliaths. And our prediction was that the loss of mass from skipping would put them below spawning threshold. However:”   
He gestured the map forward and swiped it to the coastline north of Vale’s gulf.  
“Three days ago, they walked out of the ocean near a settlement called Patch. At double their normal mass. And now they’re moving toward Vale. Behavior has changed completely. They’ve avoided ten of ten predicted paths.”  
Coal asked, “How do we know it’s the same swarm?”  
“Deduction. Nominally, we don’t. That’s what you’re investigating. A local huntsman has eyes on them. He’s reporting an alpha goliath, two subordinates, and a monarch. I need you to get out there and reconnoiter the swarm. I want composition, density, agitation, everything you can gather. Any questions?”  
Major Coal said, “Just for Midori, Sir.”  
He turned to her and asked, “I don’t know what kind of flying the Retinue has you do, but we’ll spend twenty minutes unpowered in space. You’ve got certs for this kind of equipment, right?”  
Gray raised an eyebrow, joining in that questioning. She got these looks a lot from the older generations.  
Midori laughed. Now it was she who outclassed him. “Gentlemen, I’ve got more certs than you two are cleared to know about.”  
Twenty minutes later, her seat restraint clicked into place, and the canopy of the Borealis closed over her head. The constriction from her seat padding and restraints felt like being swaddled in the heart of a great, mechanical beast. She sealed her helmet. Every breath drew a long hiss from the machine feeding her air.  
In the pilot seat her, Major Coal started ignition. Midori’s panels lit up as the on-board computer booted. She heard a click in her helmet, and their comms started.  
“Can you hear me fine, Midori?”  
“Five-by-five, Major.”  
“Seat comfy?”  
“Starting to think it was made for me.”  
“Don’t get too comfortable. My copilot got roped into the Field Day drills on the red team. They stuck him in a gunship and told him to fly like a Nevermore.”  
“Sounds like The Suck sucked him in.”  
“The Suck?”  
“Infantry slang. You know, like, how everything in the military sucks no matter how cool it is?”  
She saw the Major’s shoulders jerking in front of her. He was chuckling, too quietly to trigger his microphone.  
“Sounds right,” he admitted.  
His helmet turned Port side, to another large machine in the hangar, draped mysteriously in tarp. Coal stared. Midori smiled.   
She asked, “What do you think of it?”  
“It looks like a Mark Two Paladin. But… Bigger.”  
“Close. Paladins have beefy armaments for a mecha, but they’re only rated to fight Grimm. In the Retinue, we hunt huntsmen. You’re looking at Crusader.”  
“That’s yours, Midori?”  
“That’s mine.”  
Major Coal read off the bold serial number on the side.  
“V, T, N, T, M, R, K, Thirteen. That’s the joint forces R&D group the Merlot’s started, right?”  
“Yup.”  
“I recognize those heat sinks. That’s the adaptive power-armor system I designed. You know, before the Schnees ran me out. I guess it still works.”  
“Holy shit, what? That’s an understatement, Major! Your invention is indestructible! Well, no. You’ve been watching the tourney, right?”  
“Of course.”  
“Those duralithium blades Penny’s got are from the same lab. She’s the only huntsman in Remnant who can scratch the Crusader.”  
Major Coal sighed. “With duralithium? You’re kidding.”  
“Not when they’re unpowered. What she’s swinging around on stage are basically sharp clubs. But when they’re powered, they’re electron blades.”  
“Uhuh. Let’s be real, though: How is she supposed to power six electron blades? She’d need batteries half her weight. Or a small dust reactor. Which… Is feasible. But where’s she hiding it? Kids these days don’t go long on the skirts. Could a cybernetic-?”  
Midori remembered suddenly that she had more clearances.  
She interrupted, “We should stop talking about this.”  
Major Coal stopped. He turned his helmet and glanced back at her, confused. She shook her head, very seriously.   
He nodded. “Understood. Alright. We’ve got a pile-up on the taxi system from all the flight deck activity. Let’s get our pre-flight done while we’re waiting.”  
They spent another hour waiting for the catapult. Takeoff went as planned. They flew North until they were clear of civilization, and then Midori’s heart truly beat with excitement.  
“Alright, Major. Angels thirty. Horizons clear. And that civilian flight is out of range. I’m ready to ignite our stage one.”  
“I’m green up here, too. Oh, Midori. I’ll assume we’ve both read Primer on Space?”  
“Yeah, I’m cleared for Top Secret and Space Program.”  
“Good. You ever seen The Blob?”  
“No.”  
Major Coal Pointed fore. “It’ll be somewhere near our forward horizon on the way there. Keep a look out.”  
“Will do. Ready to launch, Major?”  
“Hit it.”  
She lifted two hazard-colored switch guards and flicked them to active state. The solid-fuel boosters strapped to the borealis were basically uncut dust crystals burning like a hobo fire in a trash can. They even wiggled relative to the craft as they burned. The G-forces against her chest stopped her from watching them too closely, and the incredible wonder of space kept her from wanting to.  
Remnant fell away behind her, as if she was departing it in a dream, and the blue sky parted like a curtain covering nature’s modesty. Naked space laid out before her. The heavens, the garden that the gods had laid out for humanity, awaited her conquest. And then every instrument in the craft lost power. Even the solid fuel stopped burning in an instant, then detached and drifted away.  
Dust doesn’t work in space. The gods hadn’t mentioned that in Crusade. It seemed like an important detail to their plan for humanity. Midori thought they could have left a note, like, “By the way, you’ll need an alternative fuel for space travel.”   
The heavens were made off-limits by that failure of the miraculous mineral. Her advance into the stars slowed, the G-forces waned, and she was in free-fall, on a ballistic trajectory back to Remnant, to Patch.  
All she heard up here was her organs pumping, and the oxygen flowing into her helmet from a pressure system. The nose of the Borealis lowered, and the great circle of home came into view. The shattered moon drifted past her starboard side, its tail of asteroids following like baby ducklings. Above Remnant’s clouds, she saw a blue halo of breathable air. And near the horizon, poking to the extreme of that air, she saw Peak Thirty-Three. She waved.  
Then she heard a loud tapping. Major Coal had rapped his knuckle against the canopy. He pointed.  
She looked up. And she saw The Blob. The great black mass of tentacles writhing in orbit, only visible where it reached into Remnant’s halo, and then retracted as it touched light. The mass of that single Grimm was greater than the whole of Vale. She felt an incredible hatred for it on sight. She imagined how satisfying it would be to tether that beast and drag it down to Remnant’s surface. That great shadow was a second barrier to space travel. It was standing between Humanity and Destiny.  
She heard wind. The Borealis’ nose stopped dropping, and levelled out as the atmosphere thickened and the wings generated lift. A minute later, Major Coal hit his ignition, and the engines powered on. The great circle of Remnant receded beyond their view, and the blue curtain concealed space once again. Her panels flicked to light, and Major Coal spoke.  
“Back in action. Alright, Midori, I’ll call Eidolon. You try and get our huntsman on the horn. His name’s Taiyang Xiao Long.”  
“Will do, Major.”  
She switched her comms from Vale CCT to the Radio Relay Network.  
“This is Borealis, First Expeditionary, hailing Taiyang Xiao Long. Anyone there?”  
A man answered, “Just call me Tai, Borealis. Had time for lunch before you got here.”  
“So did we. What have you got for us, Huntsman?”  
“Just some Grimm. I’ve got a laser designator on the Goliath.”  
Midori fiddled with her displays. “Major?”  
“Coordinates received. Turning to Two-Two-Null. ETA two minutes.”  
The craft banked around and the swarm came into view. At this altitude, the skies were clear of weather in every direction. But above the swarm were clouds and lightning and all the bad omens from the fairy tales.  
“Thank you, Huntsman. We have the target.”  
“Any time, Borealis. I’ve got a second one for you. Tell me when you receive.”  
“Done. What is it?”  
“A cocoon. I think they’re spawning a Monarch.”  
“Alright. We can take it from here, Huntsman. You have a nice day.”  
“Will do, Borealis. And thanks for the banter. It gets lonely out here. Tai out.”  
Major Coal turned them down below the weather. Midori switched on the cameras below the Borealis’ hull.  
“Alright. I’ve got eyes on the swarm, Major. Keep us level and I’ll snap some pictures.”  
The craft shook, then lurched as the turbulence lashed them.  
“Level as I can, Midori. What’re we looking at?”  
“Mostly Beowolves. None of them have any bones. The whole swarm must be less than a week old. Yeah, that one’s still coalescing. I don’t see a single Griffon. Some Deathclaws. A tribe of Balefires; Lots of bones. Red spirals all the way down their torsos. I’ve never seen a Grimm that old. There’s the cocoon. He’s right, definitely a Monarch. There’s a color guard around the Goliath. He’s surrounded himself with Boarbatusks. That’s not Rancor’s style. Low agitation; They’re walking in orderly patterns. High uniformity. High dispersion; about a foot of spacing between each Grimm. I don’t see any fusing or visual distortions. No spectral wind. Goliath’s holding his head too low. Spirals all end in perpendicular cuts. This isn’t the Alpha.”   
She adjusted her scopes. “Spotted the Alpha. He’s got a scar in the right ear. Two dents in the right, anterior dorsal bone. Spiral patterns extend past his… Past his shoulders. Wait. This isn’t right.”  
She hesitated too long.  
The Major called, “Talk to me, Midori.”  
“Grimm bones grow over time. Spirals come from experience. This goliath is about thirteen at most, but... The spirals…”  
She recognized them from her studies. “Major, these spirals belong to Goliath Malice. What the hell is going on here?”  
“You sure?”  
“Those spirals are identical. The only way for a Grimm to get them is to go through the same experiences in the same order.”  
Coal quoted, “Knowledge is for Man. Understanding is for the gods.”  
Midori knew the Crusade cult was limited to the Retinue. She didn’t expect to encounter it from the military. She’d been restraining herself. She smiled at Coal’s back. He was getting better by the second. She returned to her scopes. A huntress was walking in the swarm.  
She blinked and adjusted her scopes. “What in the name of… Major, get that huntsman back on the horn.”  
“Tai, you still there?”  
“Yes I am, Borealis.”  
“Midori?”  
“Huntsman, do you see a woman walking within the swarm? Reference the Alpha Goliath. Left, front foot.”  
As she said it, she zoomed her camera in and focused the lens. “Fuck me, that’s-“   
Tai spotted, “Raven?”  
Major Coal guessed, “Branwen? Blackbird?”  
The Huntress looked up as Borealis passed over her.   
Midori snapped a picture. She smiled as a realization struck. “Major, what’s our loadout?”  
“You’re on weapons, Midori.”  
She thumbed her multi-function display over the arsenal. “We’ve got a Nimbus underwing. Payload is enough for ten huntsmen. Oh my gods, Major, we’re about to bag the Retinue’s most wanted!”  
Major Coal banked them wide, to broadside the goliath. “How’s your shot?”  
Midori’s hands shook. Agent Hikari had snubbed her. And it was no secret that Shadowcat was in Vale. The Winter Soldiers were going to kill number four on the hit list, and they were too cool to bring Midori along. Well she was too cool to let them share in the big one.  
Her voice shook. “Great angle. No structures. Huntsman is behind us. I’ve got tone.”  
She flipped up the trigger guard and announced, “Hawk-Two.”  
The sound was like their boosters. A white cloud engulfed the starboard wing, and the munition streaked ahead of them at Mach-Five.  
Raven smirked, turned, and walked under the goliath to its far side. She’d been in the field too long. Nimbus Aeronautics Mark 3 had obstacle avoidance. Midori’s heart thrummed like a hummingbird.  
The missile pulled wide to maneuver, dove in under monster, and suddenly detonated against the goliath’s aura.  
Major Coal choked on his own spit. “Ahk. It- What the hell?”  
Midori had forgotten that detail. Malice had an aura. She’d known that, and she’d forgotten. That’s why Raven was standing just under it. Midori had just blown her chance at glory. Her face burned. She would never live this moment down.  
They passed overhead. Raven stepped out from under the goliath and waved at them.  
Coal banked again. “Second try?”  
Midori swallowed. Her indicator blinked red. “That’s all we’ve got, Major.”  
They were quiet while he brought them up to altitude and angled them for the launch home. They had a lot to think about. They were silent, rising above the clouds, watching Remnant become a sphere.  
Midori always found solace in other people’s problems. She asked, “Why doesn’t he move to the city?”  
Coal hummed, “Who?”  
“He said he’s lonely out here. Why doesn’t he move?”  
“Maybe he’s a Crusader.”  
“Maybe he is. Think he knows about his daughter?”  
“Yang? That kid she crippled in the tournament? The whole world knows about that.”  
“Tough life. Hey, speaking of the tournament, who do you think’s getting the matchup tomorrow?”  
“I dunno. I’m hoping for that archer kid from mistral to fight that aura-fiend from Vacuo. It’s crazy she got this far fighting with her fists. And her semblance? When he knocked the floor out from under her? Levitation is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen on that stage.”  
Midori agreed. “Those desert monks are no joke. But I bet Penny Polendina’s gonna sweep the tourney. Especially if the Bureau can figure out Pyrrha Nikkos’ semblance before the fight.”  
Major Coal cringed. “That feels like cheating.”  
“They’re just reviewing publicly available videos. Nothing wrong with that.”  
“The military sure spends a lot on Polendina,” Coal noted.  
Midori didn’t answer.  
He realized, “So our secret weapon is sweeping the tourney, huh?”  
He sounded like she’d stolen the jam from his toast.  
An indicator flicked on. Coal distracted himself with it. “Alright. We’re pointed home and up. Boost when you’re ready, Midori.”  
She hit it.  
On the ride to the stratosphere, as the globe rounded out, Major Coal spoke through the G-Forces.  
He said, “When I’m up here, I think about all those flabby PoGs behind the walls who can’t even lift a sword. I’m glad my son’s a huntsman. I think those walls give us all a false sense of security, you know? Should’ve listened to the gods.”  
They hit space. The boosters cut and fell away.   
To the darkness, where no one could hear her, Midori said, “What do the gods know? They left us this mess.”  
She rested her head back and fantasized about a life of freedom on the high seas.


	28. Field Day

Ruby Rose sat on an ammo crate in the fields north of Vale, dangling her legs and feeling bored. Weiss stood beside her, arms crossed, falling asleep on her feet. They were idling with Blue Company, talking to some new friends named Cobalt and Steele. A Paladin pilot joined their huddle and crouched down into the chat.

Pilot said, “Nice weather.”  
Steele nodded, “Yup.”  
Cobalt added, “Mhm.”  
Ruby nodded her agreement.  
Weiss’ head lolled over to one side, then straightened when her balance alarmed her.  
She asked, “Are we starting yet?”

Steele shook his head. “Nah. Muster was at Null-Eight-Hundred, and we’ve only been out here for an hour. It’s probably starting in another twenty.”

Their radios all crackled, snapped, and then announced in dulcet tones, “All forces, this is Eidolon.”  
Cobalt elbowed Steele. “Hey. It’s that Merlot chick.”  
“Who?”  
“You know, Fola. She’s the comms officer on the carrier.”  
“Really?”  
“Yeah.”  
“She’s got a nice voice.”  
“Yeah, she’s pretty hot, too.”  
Weiss snapped, “Are you even listening? She’s giving us instructions! We’re supposed to listen!”

So they did.  
“We will now simulate a Grimm attack of Threat Level Seven. Allow me to review radio protocol for the simulation’s duration. All radio communication within the simulation will be spoken in the negative. I will give an example now. We are not being invaded by Grimm. Any emergency messages should be prefaced with warcode ‘Apple.’ I will now give an example. ‘Apple. We are under attack.’ That was just an example. All simulated orders from Vale TacCom will be pre-recorded messages. The first pre-recorded message will begin the simulation.”

The broadcast ended and Cobalt snarked, “Good thing we know what to do now, right?”  
“Only had that briefing five times,” Steele sighed.

Their radios crackled again, and a robotic voice announced, “Simulation begins now.”

Ruby hopped to her feet. “So we’re starting now, right?”  
“Finally,” Weiss snapped.  
“Don’t get too excited,” Steele mumbled. “It’ll probably be another hour before anything happens.”  
Ruby growled, “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh,” and flopped back onto the crates.  
Weiss huffed, “Is this really what you do all day? I thought the military would be putting all of this equipment to use, but we’re just standing around!”  
The soldiers laughed. The laughter spread to the platoon, then the whole company as she was repeated in mocking tones.  
“Oh man,” Steele chuckled. “You’ve got a bad case of The Suck.”  
“What’s the suck? It doesn’t make my face look bad, does it?”  
“Oh yeah,” Cobalt nodded. “Makes you look just like that.”  
Ruby sat up. “Oh no! Is it contagious?”  
“Very,” The pilot chuckled.  
Ruby’s fear turned to suspicion.  
She grumbled, “They’re making fun of us, Weiss.”  
Weiss moaned, “I only signed up for this because I thought it would be fun.”  
The soldiers laughed harder.  
“It is called a field day,” Ruby noted.  
Her eyes settled on the Paladin, and the soldiers settled down enough to notice. The pilot gestured over his shoulder. “Cool stuff, huh? Yeah, not everybody gets to pilot a state of the art machine.”  
Ruby frowned at it, waggled her head around, and said, “Naaah. I wasn’t impressed.”  
“What?! That’s- you realize this thing can take on a team of huntsmen, right?”  
Ruby scrunched her nose. “Not my team.”  
The pilot straightened, as if accepting a challenge. Steele held out a hand.  
“Hold up, Man. Yang Xiao Long’s on her team. Remember that Paladin the White Fang jacked? Yang’s the one who took it out.”  
The pilot nodded, “Oh yeah? She sucker punch its legs?”  
Ruby snapped, “Hey!”  
Cobalt held out his hands and barked, “Dude!”  
Steele shook his head in disapproval.  
Weiss waited, then said, “Ruby, she did break Mercury’s leg. It’s a valid criticism.”

Time wore down the barriers between them. An hour later, the soldiers and the huntresses had agreed to stop arguing. The pilot had spotted something out in the field. When he came back, everyone gathered around to look at a rusted Ballistic Chain Scythe. The Paladin pilot set to work cleaning off the serial number.

“Oh man. Haven’t seen one of these since my dad closed down shop. That was… Twenty years ago?”  
Steele asked, “Your dad made weapons?”  
“Nah. Just a wholesaler.”  
Weiss and Ruby looked at the weapon with concern. Ruby finally whispered to Weiss, “That looks like Blake’s gun.”  
Weiss snapped, “Of course it does, Ruby. Blake Belladonna uses a variant of the Ballistic Chain Scythe. She’s only geeked out to Yang about it like a million times.”  
“Guns aren’t geeky,” Ruby defended.  
“Yeah!” The pilot agreed.   
He turned to Ruby, “And yes, Shadowcat does use a variant of the everyman’s weapon.”  
“The what?”  
The pilot chuckled. “Oh, that’s… Sorry. Marketing. So my dad wanted to start a business. The whole family broke into a Merlot warehouse and loaded up our trucks with these things. Only, come to find out the military had rejected them.”  
“I can see why,” Weiss blurted. “The Schnee Enforcer is clearly a superior pistol.”  
“Yeah. If you can afford it. But if you’re a faunus… A broke huntsman leading a revolution, for example, you need a gun that economizes.”  
He racked the slide, to make sure it was empty.  
Ruby pointed, “The action looks really sloppy.”  
“Yeah it’s supposed to be that loose. It takes a lot of ammo types. You can send your aura through it, .223 Freeze, .50 lightning, BPI .30-“  
Weiss, incredulous, interrupted, “It can take all of those?”  
“Oh yeah. It’ll break in a month no matter what you feed it. Not the chassis, though. That’s the important part to the faunus. When you engage the transform to melee, you get a blade that’s kind of kukri-boomerang hybrid. So each faunus carries two guns. You tie a ribbon through the trigger guard, and wrap that around your wrist. So one gun, you toss up into a tree and swing around with. The other one, you shoot with. And you just alternate as you go. Check it out.”  
He held out the weapon and flicked his wrist. The pistol transformed half-way to a gun-assisted dagger. The transformation halted part-way, stuck on dirt.  
He sighed. “Yeah, okay, it’s not a great weapon. But we got ‘em free, and dad realized we could sell them to the faunus. So if you’re ever walking through the woods and you hear a sound like someone’s dropped a bag of marbles, hit the deck and think fondly of my old man.”  
He tossed it back to the ground.

Cobalt walked away to stare at the clouds. Steele yawned. Weiss had already fallen asleep again. Ruby couldn’t have been more excited. “Oh wow! I love guns! Check this out.”  
She pulled Crescent Rose from her back. “It looks like a pistol, right?”  
The pilot nodded, “Well, you’re a small girl, so-”  
“WRONG!” She triggered the action, and Crescent deployed to its shotgun configuration, then extended to its sniper state, then unfolded to a six-foot war-scythe.  
Steele yawned, “Hey, Cobalt. Check this out.”  
The pilot looked amazed. He held up a finger. “I got an idea.”  
He ran to his mech and flipped the ammo hopper open. “If I know sniper-scythes, that’s a Nebula Type three, right? High-Impact receiver?”   
“Actually, I made it myself. But yeah, I liked the Nebula Artificers’ aesthetic, and I went high-impact, because-“  
“Everything else just tickles ‘em,” they said in unison.  
The pilot checked his surroundings for officers, then reached into the hopper and pulled out a live round. He held it up. “We use the same munitions.”  
Ruby had never been so excited in her life. “Oh my gosh! Is that a Schnee low-grain burn cabochon?”  
The pilot nodded, eyes flaring with excitement.  
Ruby rocked side to side in excitement. “I only get to use safety rounds at school. Can you fire some?”  
The pilot cringed. “No. No, I cannot. I’d lose my saddle if I did that. But, uh…”  
He checked his shoulders again, then tossed her the round. ”If you shot one off, they’d probably just give you a weekend of detention or something, right?”

A pre-recorded message played over the radio.  
“The Perimeter is not breached. All units have fifteen minutes to proceed to fallback position one and give firing orders.”

Steele and Cobalt turned and sprinted to their troop transport. The sudden commotion woke Weiss and startled Ruby. She hot potato’d the round back to the Paladin pilot and ran to catch up. She and Weiss jumped into the troop transport as its wheels spun out, and they sped to the safety of the wall.

With the wind messing up their hair, Ruby and Weiss looked like they would never, ever enlist.  
Weiss huffed her exertion away, looked at the mud on her heel-boots, and said, “Wow, Ruby. This is just like you said. So fun.”  
“Sorry, Weiss.”  
“Ugh. I wonder what Blake’s doing.”  
“I dunno, Weiss. She said she was going out.”  
“Ruby, everything is out.”  
“Maybe she was going on a date.”  
“I don’t think so. She didn’t take Yang with her.”  
“What?”  
“Nevermind.”  
“But Yang dates boys.”  
“Does she?”  
Ruby’s eyes danced.  
She realized, “Well… No. That’s strange. She sure talks about it a lot, but she never does it.”  
“And let’s face it, Ruby. Blake didn’t want to go to the dance until Yang invited her. I think it’s for real.”  
“I don’t know, Weiss. My sister reeeeeealy likes boys.”  
“I think you should have an open mind, Ruby.”  
“I think you might be projecting, Weiss.”  
“Wow, Ruby. Really? Now you’re making it weird.”

The transport slowed through a gate and turned to park. They hopped out and ran up the wall, to the battlements. Ruby deployed her sniper-scythe through the rifle slat and sat into a firing stance.  
Steele laid prone beside her with binoculars.

Ruby spotted motion cresting the hill they’d abandoned. She shouted, “Oh my gosh! There’s something out there!”  
“Yeah. That’s red team,” Steele mumbled, “Those poor, tormented souls.”  
Weiss peered out at the field and asked, “Where? I can’t see anything. Ruby, describe it to me.”  
“I think it’s a guy in a bobblehead Beowolf costume on an ATV.”  
“Really? A costume? Now that’s just ridiculous.”  
Steele nudged Ruby for her attention. “Huntress, you have a designator?”  
Ruby flipped her scope laser on.  
“Sure do!”  
“Cool. I’ll talk to the cruiser. Woglinde has a five second delay to target, so designate with a lead.”  
She leaned down into her scope and said, “On target. Call it.”  
Steele tapped his helmet mic on.  
“Woglinde, this is Blue Company FO. I do NOT have a fire mission. Grid Aleph 3. Mark to Mark.”  
Woglinde called back, “Mission holding, Blue Company. Guns are occupied and you are not at priority.”

Steele released his helmet mic. Cobalt handed out water bottles. They drank. They sat for ten minutes while the ATV trundled at them.  
“So… Artillery?” Weiss asked.  
“Nope,” Steele said.  
Ruby asked, “When they said that we’re not priority, did they mean, like, not, or not not?”  
Cobalt mumbled, “Definitely not.”

They all sat for another twenty minutes while the bobblehead on the ATV drove at them.  
Ruby asked, “I did good though, right?”  
Weiss sighed for attention.  
Steele found a pebble on the battlement. He threw it at a lone fence post in the field. The hit had a satisfying thwack to it. Cobalt nodded appreciatively, and the soldiers spent the next few minutes throwing rocks at the post. Weiss made a pitiful attempt that she didn’t repeat.   
Ruby was too focused on the bobblehead. She warned, “He’s gonna get us.”  
The ATV pulled up to the gate and stopped. The soldier in the bobblehead shouted, “I’m gonna getchya!”  
Weiss had laid down on the ground.   
She moaned, “Are we dead yet? Can we be dead now?”  
Steele nodded down the line. “The gamemaster with the CO tells us.”  
They turned to look. A marine with a red helmet spoke to the Captain, who shouted, “Steele, Cobalt, the two huntresses, and everyone who is currently standing: You have ten minutes to fall back with me to line two. The rest of you are casualties.”

They jumped up and ran. Fallback position two was on the far side of the highways, in the commercial district. Pedestrians stopped to take pictures of them. Steele and Cobalt waved and smiled. Ruby and Weiss sat for two hours and whined while demolitions experts pretended to drop the highways to stall the bobblehead man. As a plus, he now had to move on foot, since Beowolves would be distracted wreaking carnage in downtown.

When Weiss could sit no longer, she stood and leaned against a shop: From Dust Till Dawn. Ruby pressed her face to the glass and peered at the comic section in the back. Her eyes bulged. She tugged Weiss’ sleeve.  
“Weiss! Weiss, they have a new edition of-“  
“No, Ruby,” Weiss snapped.  
“But Weiss, we’re probably gonna be here a while. And I just want-”  
“No!”  
“I’ll be quick!”  
“Ruby, if I have to be bored, you have to be bored!”  
“Fiiiiiine,” Ruby grumbled.  
At her side, Steele and Cobalt were engaged in a discussion on the finer points of women.  
Steele said, “No, dude. Redheads. Okay?”  
He counted on his fingers, “Pyrrha Nikkos.”  
“Of course,” Cobalt said academically.  
“Athena.”  
“No, that’s cheating. They’re basically the same.”  
“No, dude. Blondes are all the same. You got Winter Schnee and the Snow Queen, so I get two. And here’s three, okay? Fola Merlot.”  
Ruby and Weiss glared at them.  
Steele held his arms out. “What? You’re not on his side, are you?”  
Weiss snapped, “Winter is my sister!”  
“Okay, but she does look like the Snow Queen of Mantle. It’s not just me, right?”  
“Who cares? The Snow Queen is a myth. And besides, you can’t just reduce people to their hair color. Looks are more about how you carry yourself and what you wear and how you speak.”  
Steel and Cobalt looked at each other. They laughed. Cobalt nudged Weiss. “You got someone in mind?”  
“W-w-well, I mean…”  
Ruby noticed a blush. She prodded, “Weiss? Do you?”  
“Well, I mean, j-just as an example, if we were discussing objectively attractive traits- I mean, since the topic isn’t about our subjective preferences, I could probably think of a viable candidate for-“  
Ruby leaned in closer and said, “You’ve got a crush on a girl.”  
“I do not, Ruby! I was just going to say that Professor Glynda Goodwitch carries herself very well!”  
Cobalt pantomimed throwing a bomb at Steele’s feet. “Boom! Blonde!”  
Steele sucked his teeth. “I gotta give you that one. That’s worth two weeks of leave right there.”  
Weiss stomped her foot. “You’re missing the point! Ruby, help me out, here. Looks aren’t just about hair color, right?”  
Ruby thought through everyone she’d seen. She decided, “Remember Roman Torchwick’s henchman? That girl on the White Fang train? Neapolitan? With the different colored eyes and all the colors in her hair? I thought she looked cute. Not when she was trying to kill my sister. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh! Cute!’ But, you know.”  
Steele nodded, “Yeah, no I see it. We have a girl like that in the fleet. Cobalt, remember the ensign on Eidolon?”  
“Oh yeah. Huh. I dunno. I thought she was kind of weird. Gotta stick with one.”  
Over the slope of the street, the bobblehead Beowolf emerged as the soldier jogged at them.  
Steele tapped his helmet mic on and called, “Woglinde, this is Blue Company. New Fire Mission. Tar-”  
The cruiser interrupted him.  
“-Blue Company, Woglinde. Preface your orders with ‘not!’ Didn’t you get the briefing?! And I am too busy to take your order. Stop asking.”  
Steele didn’t snap anything back to them. His jaw clenched and he made an aggressive but meaningless gesture to show his frustration.  
Ruby frowned, “He’s gonna get us again.”  
The bobblehead shouted, “I’m gonna getchya again!”

Fallback position three covered only Vale’s center. Steele and Cobalt stood at a street corner with Ruby and Weiss. Two blocks behind them, another pack of soldiers had retreated from Vale’s other end. So Beacon Academy had fallen.

Cobalt leaned over to Ruby and Weiss to speak under his breath.  
“We’re supposed to call this the safe zone,” he explained.  
Steele finished, “But it’s really called suicide square.”  
Weiss understood instantly.  
She moaned, “Because everyone who made it here wishes they’d died.”  
“Yeah, this kinda sucks,” Ruby said.  
Her eyes lit up. “Oh! The Suck! I get it now!”  
Steele and Cobalt laughed with her. They spent a few hours sitting. They watched the sun set. That long time to think did bad things to Cobalt. He’d realized the morbidity of the situation.  
He said, “Dude. All of our friends are dead.”  
Steele nodded. “We’re dead, too, man. There’s no way we’re getting out of this.”  
“Maybe we’ll get artillery?”  
“And then what? Every farm from here to the coast has been pillaged and trampled by the swarms. You get this far, you better make peace with your gods, man.”  
Cobalt pointed down the street and said, “Hey look.”  
There was the bobblehead Beowolf, still jogging.  
Weiss whined, “This is so boooooooring.”  
Ruby shrugged, “At least we’re not that guy.”  
Cobalt smiled, “What a champ.”  
Steele murmured, “Third time’s a charm,” and tapped his helmet mic.  
“Woglinde, this is Blue Company. I do not have a new mission. FFO.”   
“Blue Company, Woglinde. Not FFO.”  
“Don’t Send it.”  
“Not Sent.”

Cobalt mouthed the count down from five.  
Ruby flipped on her laser designator.  
“I have to mark it, right?”  
Steele shook his head. “Nope. FFO is Final Firing Orders. It’s a preset. Vale’s lost.”  
“Two. One…”  
A flare fell from the sky and landed on the bobblehead Beowulf. The marine stopped, planted his hand on his knees, and promptly fell over from exhaustion.  
Ruby felt excited. She asked, “Do we win?”  
Weiss, head propped against the wall of a nightclub, closed her eyes and legitimately snored.  
Steele shrugged. “I’m not sure. Should we get that guy some water?”  
Over the radio, they heard the last pre-recorded message: “Simulation complete. All swarms are defeated. Vale survives.”  
Cobalt ripped off his helmet, slammed it on the ground and cheered. “WOO!”  
Weiss startled awake.  
Cobalt cupped his hands and shouted down the street, “IYAOYAS! OORAH!”  
Ruby joined, “Hooray! We Win! I knew we could do it, Weiss!”  
Weiss said, “Alright. Let’s go home.”  
Ruby waved, “Bye Steele! Bye Cobalt! Sleep well!”  
Cobalt laughed. “Yeah, if only. We’re on guard duty till midnight.”  
“Ouch. Sorry. Well… Bye.”  
Weiss pulled her out of the awkward situation, and they started their trip back to Beacon. At the bus stop, Weiss tried to sleep against Ruby’s shoulder. Ruby kept lookout. It was she who noted the troop transport driving past them, and Blake sitting in its back among a group of faunus.


	29. Deadly Nightshade

Blake ‘Shadowcat’ Belladonna climbed into the troop transport and found her seat beside Umbra. Following the routines and rituals of familiarity, she glanced everyone over, plopped onto the bench, and flipped open a book to ignore them. The truck pulled onto the road, and she started the final chapter of Crusade.

She didn’t want to look them in the eye. That was too familiar. She felt her emotions balancing on the bladed edge of indecision, felt herself splitting in two with each second of hesitation, balanced between these two worlds. That limbo wasn’t a place she could stay in. People were increasingly noticing she didn’t fit. Humanity saw her as a faunus; And she could tell, in the weight of their glares, that even her oldest friends were now wondering if her ears were fake.

She looked up. At her side, Umbra smiled, coy and cocky.  
He said, “I was a little worried you wouldn’t join us.”  
She shrugged, “I almost didn’t. Perry, Batteries.”  
She hadn’t expected to see the young revolutionary here. But she knew he’d have some. Perry looked far too young for the job; Shadowcat had been far too young. It was only from her distance that the world’s cruelty came into perspective.

Perry tossed her two rechargeables. She clicked her field light on for the first time in years. She held it in her mouth and tried to bury herself in Crusade. Professor Oobleck wanted her book report on his desk by the end of the week.

She felt Umbra lean close to her, his breath on her shoulder as he read over it.  
“Why are you always reading, Blake?”  
Around the lamp she muttered, “It keeps me calm.”  
“What’s it about?”

She glanced to the verse they’d interrupted her on. Desecration 10:20. She read aloud.  
“’The suffering of the people was great, and they saw their inheritance around them, the Grimm darkness closing, the black sun burning in the night. Humanity wailed. They turned skyward and prayed for angels to avenge them. The gods were unanimous in their decision. ‘We have drawn before from the purgatorial souls, and allowed them penance for serving humanity. We shall indenture another.’ And so a soul was reformed into the Angel of Light and cast down to the Remnant.’”  
Blake paused. “Hang on, there’s a footnote.”  
She sighed and flipped to the index. “’The title here translated as ‘Angel’ could also be translated as demon, devil, ogre, or troll.’”  
She scribbled in the margin, “Oops? Q Prof.”

She looked up from the book. Everyone’s jaws hung slack in amazement.  
Perry stammered, “B-Blake… You’ve never…”  
Even Umbra looked a little bug-eyed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you read before.”  
She shrugged. “I guess I’ve changed.”  
Across from her, Verdan looked miffed. She could guess that Verdan’s loyalty to Adam, and Umbra’s loyalty to Shadowcat, were a cause for drama in the group.  
Verdan nodded upward at her. “What book is that?”  
She held it up, and everyone tilted their heads to read the spine.  
Verdan sneered, “Crusade? That’s a human book.”  
“Yes.”  
She glared at Verdan, to show him how she’d changed, that she was no longer afraid. Or at least, that she could fake not being afraid. Amethyst leaned her head against Verdan, trying to draw attention to herself- to her closeness to Verdan. She was responding to Shadowcat’s attention. Blake understood that her friends had changed, too; They were a couple now. Aqua sat past Amethyst, arms folded and pretending to ignore them.

Amethyst’s eyes flicked from Blake to Umbra. She smiled and cooed, “Uh oh, Umbra. Blake’s settling down. Next thing we know she’ll be paying taxes and wearing a ring.”  
Umbra shifted his weight.  
Shadowcat tilted her head and leveled her eyes, as if to say, “Really? Seriously?”  
Everyone laughed.  
“Glad to have you back,” Umbra whispered.  
Then, louder, “Seriously, though, what’s with the book?”  
“Seriously,” she retorted. “It keeps me calm.”  
Verdan asked, “What about the book I gave you, Blake?”  
Amethyst cast him an annoyed look.  
Shadowcat folded Crusade closed in her lap. She knew they’d get as many words out of her as they could. She wouldn’t be reading.  
She said, “Yeah. Yeah, I read it. When I first got to Vale, I didn’t know what to do next. And I guess I kinda stood out. I was standing on the street by a fish cart, trying to figure out how to nab some. And then this guy with a cane comes by, buys some fish, and hands it to me. And then he leaves.”  
Perry looked terrified. “Was he Retinue? A Specialist?”  
Verdan shushed him. “Let her tell it.”  
Shadowcat continued, “So I followed him. Turns out, he’s the headmaster at Beacon.”  
“Ozpin?”  
Shadowcat nodded. “A week later, I was sitting on a shuttle full of kids my age, some faunus, too. We were all on our way to Beacon academy. I was accepted. The shuttle docked, and I could smell the ocean breeze, and there were people handing me free stuff and books and the key to my dorm… Believe it or not, that was when I started having second thoughts. I thought… What am I doing here? Is this who I am?”

Shadowcat saw the look everyone was giving her.   
She sighed. “Don’t get your hopes up. I told myself I couldn’t change my mind so soon. Not yet. Not until I’d really breathed the air and taken in the sights. Then I got off the shuttle and realized… There’s no way. I don’t belong here. How long would it really take for someone to recognize me? I thought for sure that I’d be arrested any moment. I’d just stupidly walked into a trap, right? I panicked. But I was up in Beacon, and the transport left. It wasn’t like I could run away. So I stuck my nose in the book you gave me, and didn’t look up again until I walked right into Weiss Schnee.”  
Amethyst guffawed, then fell into hiccupping chuckles. They laughed like hyenas. Umbra only stared, mouth agape. “Smooth,” he chided.  
“I know. So I said hi without, you know, lingering. Tried to act normal.”  
“How’d that go?”  
Shadowcat blushed, remembering, and admitted, “I think I literally quoted her dossier to her. I didn’t know what to say.”  
Imagining that was too much for them. They all laughed harder, doubling over.  
Aqua parodied her. “Uh, Weiss Schnee, Heiress to SDC, Uh Controversial Labor practices.”  
Blake rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t like I could just off her right there, right? And she was strapped, so I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to do it. Not without the team.”  
Her heart beat double time. She was leaning out of limbo, but not ready to commit. She swallowed. “So I ended the conversation and wandered off. Not too slow, not too fast, and kept my nose in the book.”  
Umbra summarized, “And that’s how it’s been since you left us?”  
Blake wobbled her head indecisively, a trait she’d picked up from Ruby. “Well… Technically, I have matured into a young huntress,” she said like Weiss.  
“You read out loud,” Verdan noted.  
Perry didn’t talk. He kept staring at her as if she’d performed a miracle. It made her uncomfortable.  
“Perry, we’ve been friends for years. Why are you looking at me like that?”  
Umbra chuckled.   
Verdan explained. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, Blake, but you’re basically Pyrrha Nikkos for our kind.”  
Shadowcat shook her head dismissively. “I know for a fact that I’m nothing like Pyrrha.”  
Verdan noted, “First name basis.”  
“I kinda see the resemblance,” Umbra grinned.  
Amethyst cooed, “You’ve both got a thing for blondes. She likes Jaune Arc, and you’ve got… What’s her name?” She eyed the suggestion to Umbra.  
He didn’t answer.  
Shadowcat- Blake- Blushed harder. Not as she would with friends, but in actual embarrassment.   
Slowly, she turned to Umbra and whispered, “How long exactly have you been watching me?”  
Umbra tried to lie. Before the words passed his lips, he shrugged and admitted, “Two months.”   
“Adam told you to.”  
“Adam told us to bring you in.”  
“This is a trap?”  
“No. I told Adam he can do it himself.” Umbra glared at Verdan as he said it.   
No reaction from that side of the truck. Blake saw the factions and their division. She leaned in to Umbra, so her lips were obscured against his cheek. He’d grown a beard. It felt nothing like Yang.   
Blake whispered, “If you told Adam off, then why bring me into this?”  
Verdan and Amethyst smiled as they watched. Exchanged whispering had long been a game friends and lovers played in the wild. Umbra returned the discreteness, cheek-to-cheek, his lips against her ear.  
“I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you, Blake. I’ve seen what happens to people who don’t get their closure. The guy who killed my dad? I didn’t have peace of mind when he died. I had to sneak into Mantle Memorial Park and dig him up before I felt whole again.”  
Their heads traded angles and she hissed, “You knew I couldn’t turn this down. And you knew this was a trap. All you’ve offered me is martyrdom.”  
Umbra chuckled. He leaned back in to her. “No. You’re going in first. Make it quiet. The moment we hear anything, we’ll go in hard. I want you to get out as soon as the fighting starts. Run away and live your life, Blake.”  
Shadowcat asked, “Suppose I don’t want to.”  
Umbra patted her shoulder. “Trust me, Blake. You’ve got something with your team that’s really special. Just don’t let Blondie break your heart.”

The truck lurched to a stop. Shadowcat stowed her book and pulled a mask of Grimm bone over her head. She closed her eyes, and for a moment, wondered what team RWBY was doing in her life. She’d prayed for a better life. Was this heaven’s blessing? Or would her biography have a footnote about mistranslation?

Everyone piled out of the truck and finished their functions checks. The muted metallic clicks of Ballistic Chain Scythes thrilled her. Three blocks away, in Atlas’ “Safe Zone,” lay the embassy suites, and Noir Soleil.


	30. Night's End

Visitors describe Vale’s night sky as diamonds on black silk. City heat ripples the silk, and the diamonds dance. That same effect, heat scrambling the darkness, disguised the black aircraft circling over downtown.

Winter’s Tiltjet had all the electronics they needed to spy on Soleil’s quarters. Agent Hikari of the Special Retinue Service leaned over Orchid’s shoulder and watched the monitors.  
She nudged him. “Anything?”  
Orchid shook his head. “All quiet. I’m just listening to these two idiots.”  
He gestured at the marines guarding the embassy’s service entrance.  
Hikari pointed to a screen. “Soleil?”  
“Sleeping.”  
“What are the marines talking about?”  
Orchid switched their audio to a speaker.

Light rain pattered against their parkas and loosened Vale’s topsoil.  
Cobalt asked, “Hey, Steele? You ever feel like you’re being watched?”  
Steele shook his head. “Nope.”

Hikari sighed, “Nevermind. Soleil?”  
Orchid flicked switches. Soleil’s room had light classical music playing on an old gramophone. Orchid increased the volume until they could hear the meaning in every note, the record spinning on its tray, and faintly, the steady rhythm of Noir’s breathing. A loud tap, tap, tap sounded against the window.

Orchid moved a joystick. The camera slowly panned to the window, where a raven stood and looked in. Tap, tap, tap.  
Noir sniffed, rolled over, and continued sleeping.  
Hikari looked at the service entrance. One of the marines had left his post to shine a flashlight on the ground. Orchid switched their audio on.   
Steele pushed his boot into the mud.  
Squelch.  
He pulled it out.  
Sluuuurp.  
He pushed it in.  
Squelch.  
He pulled it out.  
Sluuuuurp.  
Cobalt sighed, “Steele, what are you doing, man?”  
“Dude. Mud makes footprints, just like snow.”  
“Those are your footprints, Steele? What are you, size four? These are like a little girl’s feet, man.”  
“Screw you, bro. I’m like twelve inches. And so are my feet.”  
Cobalt laughed, “Whatever, man. Seriously, though. These, uh… Hold on. Those aren’t your footprints. They’re inside your footprints. Look. Put the light here.”  
Steele moved his flashlight over to Cobalt’s point. “Yeah? So?”  
“So think about it, dude. If you stepped on someone else’s footprint, it wouldn’t be there anymore. Someone had to step here after you did.”  
Steele looked at the footprint. He looked at Cobalt. “This is a joke, right? Like, you’re just trying to make me think I’m haunted. This is revenge for making you watch that ghost video.”  
“Dude, no, I-“

Hikari sighed and flipped their audio off. Winter appeared at her side.  
She snapped, “Rewind that.”  
Orchid sent the footage spinning backwards. Three minutes ago, Steele had wandered away from his post.  
“Stop. Play. Slowly.”  
He did. Steele and Cobalt’s inane conversation played out in rude gestures. Their heads turned to a sound. Steele walked into the darkness to investigate. He wasted ten seconds shining a flashlight, then walked back to the door with Cobalt and shrugged.   
Winter ordered, “Again. Slower.”  
They watched frame-by-frame until Orchid caught it and paused. He zoomed in on Steele’s shadow. There, barely represented by the pixels, was a single faunus eye, reflecting the city lamp-posts.  
Steele had walked back with Shadowcat crouching in his shadow, their bodies as close as they could be. When he stopped at the door and turned, her pirouette carried her just through the edge of Steele’s vision, behind Cobalt’s body, and out of the camera’s sight. In the hallway, the interior camera had her for three frames before she disappeared behind a window curtain.  
“That’s our girl,” Hikari hummed.  
Tap, tap, tap, came from Soleil’s room. They looked at the raven.  
Winter growled, “That damn bird might wake him up before she gets there.”  
The classical music stopped. 

Orchid jerked the joystick. The camera slowly panned back to the gramophone. There, Shadowcat stood beside the turntable, holding the Vinyl disc. She slipped it into its sheathe and replaced it on the shelf.

In the tiltjet, White slid a freeze crystal into his laser rifle and cocked it into the refractor chamber. He didn’t like Winter’s side job, and he didn’t hide that on his face. Cherry dragged her combat knife over a burn crystal like a whetstone, gathering small flecks of fire on the blade. 

But Winter hadn’t given the order to move yet. She wanted to see the deed done before it was punished. 

In Soleil’s room, Shadowcat sat upon his bed with a heavy thud, and Soleil slowly woke, then froze, as he saw her Grimm bone mask and glowing eyes in the dark.

Through the bone, she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll make this quick, so you can return to a peaceful sleep.”

“That’s very generous,” Noir grumbled.  
Blake shifted her weight. “I’ve learned that everyone is the hero of their own story. I want to know yours.”  
Noir cleared his throat. “That book in your hands.”  
“Crusade.”  
“Good. Society should never separate its warriors and scholars.”  
“Why did you do...” Blake shrugged. “Everything?”  
“You won’t like my answer.”  
“That’s for me to decide.”  
Soleil shifted under his blankets until he was comfortable. “If you had asked me at the time, I would have told you that I was on a personal mission. I loved someone and I was willing to do anything to save her. And I did. But I have since learned that were are mere slaves to Fate. I was an agent of Karma, sent to punish your sins, Shadowcat. And now I am being punished because I clearly did not do enough.”  
“I have a name.”  
“You are a monster. Do you know that it wasn’t your torture that broke you?”  
“You’re provoking me. It’s not going to work.”  
“She was horrified, of course. But between sessions, we allowed her to speak with one of your religious types. A lion faunus who read fortunes.”  
“If you aren’t going to answer my question truthfully-“  
“- You asked, and I’m answering, Shadowcat. You were born a monster, you will live as a monster, you will die a monster, and you deserve it, you wretched beast. You are beneath even faunus kind, and they feel that with an instinct greater than even a mother’s love.”  
“My mother died at Chernobyl under your torture. She died protecting me from you. Your lies don’t phase me, Soleil.”  
Noir glared at her. Then he licked his lips, chapped from the dryness of air conditioning. He grunted and shimmied his hips under the covers.   
He sighed. “If you’ll take any advice, then heed this: Don’t get old. The longer you last, the more everything hurts. Now do what you must.”  
Shadowcat stood. The Winter Soldiers recognized Gambol Shroud, her Variant BCS, strapped across her back. But she didn’t reach for the handle.  
She trembled.

And in a wavering voice, she said, “I didn’t come here to kill you. I came here to show you that I’ve moved on. I have an identity built of things you’ve never touched or seen. I am a product of my actions, not yours. When people ask me who I am and what I’ve done, and why I am the way I am… I no longer have to say your name. Shadowcat was a monster conceived between you and Adam Taurus! And given life by the fearmongers in your media! She isn’t a girl I recognize. I won’t play the part you’ve made for me.”  
Noir grumbled, “You already have, Shadow-“  
“-My name is Blake Belladonna! And I won’t be your monster anymore!”  
She removed her Grimm mask and threw it at his feet.  
Noir looked at it. He grunted. “But you did come here, to me, compelled by my acts.”  
Blake hissed, “I won’t linger. You don’t matter to me.”  
“Grant an old man one last wish. You see, I very much want to matter.”

Soleil’s sheets erupted as feathers, and Blake hit the drywall behind her so hard that she didn’t stop. Her body passed through the tile wall in the kitchen, and came to rest against the countertop. She didn’t move for a few seconds. In that time, Soleil sat up from his bed and seized two Dust crystals from his nightstand. In his other arm, he held a disposable burst gun. He tossed it aside, loaded a single-use hand-canon, and power-walked to her.

Blake had time to regain her breath, sit up, and take the full blunt of his next shot. The force scraped her across the cabinets and jammed her into the corner. Still, her aura held. Soleil reached into his cabinets and drew another revolver.

In the tiltjet, Hikari sneered at Winter. “Suppose he kills her. What then, Specialist?”  
“Don’t be naive. The Shadow Pact will come to her rescue soon.”  
Orchid mused, “You set Umbra free. He’s not stupid. He ran.”  
Cherry shook her head. “If they wanted her back, they’d be in that room already.”  
White shouldered his rifle and eyeballed his sights, murmuring: “Maybe Blake is to them what Noir is to us.”  
They heard a thud, and Blake screamed.  
Orchid commented, “He’s knuckling her ribs in. Old habits.”

Soleil dragged her to the kitchen’s center and hit her kidneys until something cracked.   
He shouted, “Tell me more about your identity, Shadowcat! How is it holding up to reality? Do you feel strong?”  
She sobbed. He rested his knee on her broken rib. 

The desperation in her scream was too familiar. Hikari was running through Furburg again, a light machine gun jumping in her hands, ordnance shaking the ground, the city burning and wailing.

White exhaled, long and slow. Cherry swayed side to side.   
Winter, her jaw clenched, whispered, “They will come.”

And then a lot of things happened that didn’t make sense, and didn’t need to. The raven on the window tap, tap, tapped, smashed the pane, and became Raven Branwen. The huntress drew her blade, a gravitational effect shimmering on its edge, and threw the entire apartment sideways with her swipe.

She landed on Soleil, against the far wall of his kitchen, her sword pinning him there through the heart, like a bug in a collection.

Gunshots sounded around the complex. Five Ballistic Chain Scythes found purchase in the walls. The Shadow Pact swung through the windows and strafed the kitchen with gunfire, emptying their magazines to annihilate everything.

Raven waved her hand at the wall. The camera feeds all distorted.   
Orchid tapped on his screen. “Huh. She’s doing that thing again.”  
Raven walked at the wall. She walked through it, and the visual distortions ended. She’d vanished.

In the tiltjet, Hikari pointed at the Shadow Pact and ordered, “Count ‘em.”  
Orchid smiled, “Five! That’s all five!”  
“Quiet the engines and bring us in.”

The craft swooped to the rooftop and they piled out the sides. Hikari anchored a cable to the rooftop and ran down the building. Upside down and ten stories up was great fun. Killing her enemies would be even better. She reached a window and peeked through. Inside, the world’s most wanted bunched up around Blake. They were arguing. One pointed to a wrist watch emphatically.  
Hikari whispered into her mic, “In position.”  
“White, marking Iron Eyes.”  
“Orchid. Chubby Cub.”  
Cherry slid down the far side of Hikari’s window and whispered, “I’ve got Mirage.”  
Hikari aimed down her sights. “I have Boy King. On three. One. Two.”  
They laid fire through the windows. Hikari’s target, Umbra, turned to modern art. The others reacted instantly. Shadowcat leaped, feline agility and aural power thrusting her out the window. She soared past Hikari, so close their eyes met. Hikari could see in her the fear that gives men wings. Blake boomeranged her BCS to a street lamp and swung away from the battle. 

The shooting waned, and Cherry called, “I don’t see Mirage!”  
Hikari threw a paint bomb in. The soft pop splattered the walls.  
Orchid called, “They’re leaving! They’re chasing Shadowcat!”  
Hikari jumped away from the wall to see around the corner. The last of them had made it a full block, and swung out of view.  
Hikari shimmied back and swung into the room. She called, “Orchid. Set off the embassy alarm. They won’t come back.”  
She barred the door. It wouldn’t take long for Vale PD, Fleet MPs, and the state department to arrive and demand jurisdiction.   
Cherry examined Noir’s corpse. White stood over Umbra’s corpse. Orchid was by the bed. He pocketed the old man’s diary, then started flipping through his vinyl’s. Winter had entered somehow, silent and mysterious. She stood at the room’s center and stared at the window, where Raven had been a raven. 

Hikari crept to her side, then rocked on her heels. “Hey.”  
Winter turned her chin slightly, to acknowledge the greeting.  
Hikari reported, “Winter. We didn’t lose anybody.”  
Winter nodded.  
“I hope you understand, this really couldn’t have gone better.”  
Winter nodded.  
“Good. You remember our deal?”   
Winter turned to Hikari. “Blake Belladonna will make a fine teammate for Weiss,” she admitted.  
Hikari snapped, “Great. Can we get back to our mission, now?”  
Winter pointed at the window. “What was Blackbird doing here? Why would she care about Soleil?”  
Hikari let her rifle rest on its sling, and gestured to Noir’s corpse. “He wasn’t a popular guy.”  
“When did she meet him?”  
“His reputation precedes him.”  
“How? She would have to know someone in the Retinue. Or in the White Fang. Blackbird has no history with either.”  
“She’s a Huntress. Vale Rangers, right? Maybe she walked across one of his crimes.” Hikari realized her agitation was showing. Adrenaline itched up her spine. She pulled gum from her kit and chewed. 

Winter looked pensive. Then her head snapped up, and she drew her saber towards the kitchen. Hikari followed her gaze. Shadowcat was still there, curled in the corner, face contorted in fear, holding up her arms to shield herself.  
Hikari relaxed. “Stand down, Specialist. It’s just her semblance. When she gets spooked, she drops these illusions.”  
Winter advanced into the kitchen and stood over it. Shadowcat didn’t look like a monster: She was just a terrified, sixteen year old girl. Winter jabbed the image with her saber. It flickered, then vanished.

She’d seen weirder things that night. She sheathed her sword and looked back to the window. Resuming her conversation, she realized, “Chernobyl. Raven Branwen was on Team STRQ. They went to Chernobyl. Qrow Branwen said that his sister was unsettled by that place. Soleil himself said that he’d done something there. Something that would forever make Shadowcat an enemy to humanity, if I remember correctly. That’s where Raven learned about Soleil.”  
Hikari chewed faster.   
Winter turned to face her. “Raven, Shadowcat, and Soleil. Who else was at Chernobyl?”   
Everyone turned to Winter. Hikari gestured around them.  
Winter raised an eyebrow. “Everyone in this unit? Possibly our Woman in Red?”  
Hikari cautiously allowed herself to remember the shanties.   
Orchid calmly recited, “There were ten thousand faunus.” He went back to reading the track list from a record sheathe.  
Winter turned to him, and Hikari took the break to exhale and let her face quiver.  
Winter asked, “Did any survive?”  
Orchid gestured out the window. “The Shadow Pact. Shadowcat. Her mother, Nightshade. There was a rumor that Little Bull was there.”  
Winter pursed her lips. “Nightshade. Khali Belladonna.”  
She turned to Hikari, who straightened. Winter asked, “Nightshade died at Furburg. Right?”  
Hikari nodded, remembering Woglinde’s ordnance, the searing heat, the sound like a god left his fork in the microwave. “Yeah. Ordnance got her.”  
“Was there a body?”  
“There was nothing.”  
Winter took a step into Hikari’s space. She wasn’t trying to intimidate. She was trying- and this was an awkward expression on Winter- to sympathize. She reached for Hikari, hesitated, and finally set a hand on her arm. She looked Hikari in the eye. “Tell me what happened there.”  
Hikari shrugged. “They were exporting gold. A lot of it. We were supposed to infiltrate and find out what was going on. We got spotted.”  
“Gold?”  
“Silver. Gold. Spices that don’t grow in that climate. Plants that don’t exist.” She shrugged again. “There were no farms, no mines… but they had… They had more wealth than I’d ever seen in my life. We found Elysium. And we burned it.”  
Winter’s porcelain face hid her thoughts. She said, “Nightshade had a ceremonial position in the White Fang: Queen of the Hunt.”  
“Yeah.”  
Winter nodded, thought a crazy idea over, then retracted her touch, as if steeling herself for rejection. She asked, “The Queen of the Hunt is responsible for Desecrating the Tower of Man.”   
Hikari tried to make sense of it, but gave up. “What?”  
Winter gestured to Soleil’s corpse. “Third Crusade- The book Noir gave you. It’s a collection of Faunus oral traditions.”  
Hikari shook her head. “I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”  
Winter repeated, “Are we absolutely certain that Nightshade died before Mountain Glenn?”


	31. Bumblebee

Blake landed on her knees and skidded across cobblestone. She pushed herself up by an arm and spit blood.  
Her side cramped around the broken rib. In the wild, she’d be dead. Here, in Vale, she had hope. She had to keep moving. Someone would find her and help her. Her scroll rumbled in her pocket and announced, “Aura depleted. Aura depleted. Aura-” She slapped the distress signal, then again to silence it.  
She heard swishing in the air above her. Skin slithered against ribbons, and shoes clicked onto the street around her. She looked up. The Shadow Pact had found her. Verdan stood at the lead, with Amethyst as his second. Aqua and Perry stood father back.  
Blake understood, by their looks, that they were not friendly.  
Verdan smirked. “Umbra’s dead. Nobody protecting you now, Blake.”  
Blake trembled.  
Verdan pointed at her. “He liked you, you know. When Adam told us to bring you in, Umbra told him off.” He smirked, “But I didn’t. You don’t get to leave us, Blake. You have responsibilities. You’re the Queen of the Hunt.”  
Blake forced her stomach to settle. She growled, “All that means is that Adam has his way with me.”  
Verdan shouted, “You left us! Do you understand that? Our kinship, our comradery, an unbroken line of huntresses before you- all willing to die for a cause! And you ran! You worthless coward! What are you even doing in Vale? Pretending you belong at a school? Do you want to be a human? Is that it? You think you can tie a bow in your hair and they’ll treat you like a person? Maybe if you walk and talk right, they’ll let you sleep inside and sip the wine before them, right? Or, what, you just like their books better?”  
The insults added to her injuries. She cried.  
“I read everything. You know that.”  
“I don’t believe for a second that you read the book I gave you. So you’ve got two choices right now. We take you to Adam, or you die.”  
Blake dragged her knees under her. A show of strength was all that could buy her time now. She had to stand. She locked eyes with Verdan, and for a moment remembered what Shadowcat was like. She had to be the monster for a second longer. Her tears dried. Her pain dulled. Death was acceptable. Death came from within her and spread to everything she touched.  
And as easily as ever, she stood. Verdan’s posture shifted from berating to acknowledging.  
Blake’s gut lurched. Her knees felt week. She raised her hand, forcing her way through the pain of the broken rib, and grabbed Gamble Shroud’s hilt over her shoulder.  
Her old friends tensed into fighting stances and flicked their weapons into firing mode.  
She couldn’t take them on. She couldn’t escape. She wanted to see her friends again. Her new friends. Her real friends. She could bear this pain with Yang cuddling her and Weiss reading and Ruby bringing cookies and milk.  
Autumn sighed against her. She was alone. But she had wanted that- to be a singular person, separated from that other spirit within her. She was making decisions, and Shadowcat was only helping now.  
Blake tightened her grip.  
To Verdan, she said, “Half an hour from now, when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of listening, to pace up and down this room, my last earthly refuge, and give ear to every sound of menace.”  
Breathing was harder. She had to stop and catch up.  
Amethyst drawled, “What the-“  
“Let her finish,” Verdan snapped.  
Breathing hurt.  
Blake sucked in air and asked, “Will Shadowcat die upon the scaffold? Or will she find courage to release herself at the last moment? God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death, and what is to follow concerns another than myself. Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll… To an end!”  
She drew Gambol Shroud. The BCSs rattled. Bullet casings sang on the cobblestone.   
She was saved by a wall of ice. The bullets sprinkled it with impacts, and Blake turned to see her friend Weiss Schnee down an alleyway. She’d cast a freeze crystal from her rapier.  
A motor roared behind her, and just over her head flew a flash of black and yellow, chrome wheels spinning in the air. Blake looked up. Yang’s aviator glasses reflected Blake’s shocked face. The bike passed over the ice wall, and someone caught it by the wrong end.  
The sound of fists and pain followed. Another spray of bullets shattered the ice wall. The motorbike carried on, Aqua ragdolled and dragging behind it. Yang was in the fight, bobbing and weaving through a melee with Amethyst and Verdan. Blake leaned to join, but Weiss grabbed her and heaved them both into the alley.  
A high impact receiver reported from down the street, and Amethyst was knocked to her back.   
She sneered. “Training rounds? You’re dead, kid.”  
Blake drooled blood and begged, “Weiss! They’ll kill her!”  
Ruby fired again, suppressing Amethyst as she tried to stand.  
Yang pressed her advance against Verdan. He smiled. She had no idea number of men he’d killed in close quarters. Blake knew. She grabbed Weiss by the shoulder and pushed her at the fight.  
Amethyst dodged the next of Ruby’s shots and flipped onto her feet. A spotlight lit the street, and she looked up to see one of Atlas’ warships accelerating into position. She cast a look at Verdan, locked in fighting, and ran.  
Weiss stopped short of entering the melee as if it was a dance floor. Yang’s strikes and parries were elegant and involved. Verdan’s zone control and positioning left Weiss no entry point. She rattled the revolver action on her rapier and aimed it at them. “Stop! Or I’ll-”  
Verdan found his in. It was so smooth and sudden that no one caught it. But he’d gripped Yang’s feet and lifted her from the ground. Weiss backpedaled in panic and shouted, “Let her go!”  
He squeezed, growling, and his aura burned over his arms.  
Blake’s heart stopped. She couldn’t watch. She clamped her eyes shut and tried to will it all away.  
Then Yang croaked, “Ghk. Yeah. Harder.”  
She looked again. Yang was holding up her hand- her thumb and forefinger pulled tight into a ring. “Just like- akh. That.”  
Verdan’s growl turned to confusion. He renewed the effort. His aura blazed as he poured it into the murder. But he didn’t know, and Blake had forgotten, about Yang’s semblance.  
She was absorbing his expended aura. In a single motion, she gripped him under the armpit, overpowered him with his own strength, and threw him into the sky.  
Verdan was someone else’s problem now.  
Ruby’s footfalls made it down the street. She panted, “Good work, Team! Yang, how’d you get here so fast? Look, the good guys are here!”  
She looked up through the spotlight and waved at the cruiser.   
Yang turned to Blake.   
And Blake saw her colder than she’d ever been before. Yang marched at Blake, grabbed her lapels, and dragged her to her feet.  
Blake couldn’t stop her lip from trembling. “Yang?”  
Yang pulled a paper from her pocket, Noir’s crumpled up dossier, and showed it to Blake. "Tell me you didn't do it."  
Blake trembled. Her tears flowed. She felt an overwhelming gratitude that Yang was alive, and a perilous terror that Yang wanted nothing to do with her.  
“Tell me you didn’t do it, Blake!”  
She didn’t answer.  
“Blake! You said you left them because you didn’t want to kill anymore!”  
Blake tried to adjust her feet. Her rib punished her. She winced, and Yang’s sympathy was greater than her wrath. Her grip adjusted, and she held Blake softer, closer, in a hug.  
Yang whispered, “You made me promise that I would never hurt someone like that. You believe I didn’t hurt Mercury on purpose because you made me promise, Blake. Now I need to hear it from you.”  
Blake hugged her back, then gripped her, furious and remorseful.  
She wanted to be free of Shadowcat, to make her own decisions and only call upon those heartless skills when needed. But Shadowcat wasn’t done with Blake. She dug her claws into Yang’s back, constricted her ambivalent to the complaining rib. And into her ear, she growled, "Fine. I didn't avenge my mother. I didn't kill the man who made her beg and dance and whore for him. I didn't punish the filth that put thousands of faunus through the worst hell a person can experience. Everyone in that camp looked out for me, Yang. They died for me! They abandoned all shame and spared no expense to keep me fed and clothed and safe and hidden from that monster! And do you know how I repaid them, Yang?! I couldn’t do it! I couldn't do it because I'm still scared of him! He’s dead, and I’m still scared! All I feel is fear!"  
She had shared her pain finally, and with someone she knew would care. Yang didn’t try to pull her off, nor push her away and cry ‘monster.’ Her wounds, within and without, were laid bare. She’d told the truth, wholly, about who she was and what she thought of herself. And in Yang’s eyes, she saw nothing but sympathy. Yang renewed her hug. “I don’t want you to be afraid, Blake. I don’t want you to be in pain.”  
Blake’s answer was lost in another loud noise.  
The ground shook so jarringly that buildings collapsed. Tank engines encircled the street and a swarm of gunships swooped into rotation overhead.   
A huge beast of steel cracked the street where it landed, and the whole team fell prone. It looked like a giant Paladin, but when it turned and faced them, Blake saw “Crusader” written across its chest. The massive mecha levelled two cannons with bores the size of their bodies.   
It announced with the voice of a god, “Yang Xiao Long. Drop your weapons. You are now a prisoner of Atlas.”


	32. A Conspiracy of Ravens

Ozpin, Headmaster of Beacon, stood atop his tower and looked over the Emerald City of Vale. The office clockworks ticked away time, and he remembered a very long gone time, when he’d sketched this image on the wall of a hut. Now the vision twinkled before him in the night. There was another vision, one he never dared put to pen, of darkness covering the Vale. Humanity had never been so close to extinction, and so unaware of their condition. Somewhere in this vision made real, a scarlet phantom was finding the discontent in each and every relationship. When she called upon that strife, the whole society would tear itself apart. And the Grimm would smell the chaos.

They needed time. Ironwood’s machines could bring them that time. Or perhaps Winter could find this Woman in Red and destroy her. Or Pyrrha Nikkos could take the powers. Or, as a last resort… They had Ruby. 

Ozpin saw a glimmer in the window; light reflected from behind him, and he turned to see raven Branwen.  
He’d played many parts in his time. Most recently, an instructor to the next generation. But, seeing Raven Branwen again, he remembered her first bright-eyed entrance to his academy. Maybe he’d played this part for too long.

Now, as on her last visit, Raven wore the bones of Grimm, filthy with blood.  
Ozpin squared his shoulders to greet her, and saw the light held in her hands. She had a raw burn crystal, its fragile shell shimmering as she squeezed it in her fist. She could crush it and kill them both. 

She wanted to talk first. “I just watched Ironwood cart my daughter off to his flying prison.”  
Ozpin gestured to the stadium. “She mauled another student and violated her parole.”   
“Did someone order her to?”  
Ozpin cocked his head at Raven. “You know, Ironwood thinks she’s becoming like you. He says your… dispositions are heritable.”  
Raven folded her arms. “I wonder who gave him that idea.”  
Ozpin waited for her to settle down. The resentment and fury in her tone was as fragile as the crystal in her hand.  
He hummed, "Qrow’s brotherly instincts tell him this all began when you tumbled into Chernobyl’s mineshaft. If only he had-"  
“He blames himself,” she snapped, “Because it lets him believe that his actions change the outcome of his life.”  
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t make him wrong. When you fell into that mine, you said there was something down there with you.”  
Her posture stiffened. The one thing that ever scared her always scared her.  
He continued, “A second team of huntsmen returned to the mine. Do you know what they found down there?”  
Raven didn’t answer.  
Ozpin said, “Nothing.”  
Raven snorted. “What a relief. And here I thought it was something.”  
“It was. Clearly. But when they went looking for it, it wasn’t there.”  
She chided, “Maybe it left.”  
And there lay Ozpin’s point. “Maybe it left… with you. Everyone has an aura, Raven, even the proletariat- even a tree or a dog. All ten-thousand of those faunus souls, all of their anguish, the despair of their auras should have imprinted upon the Dust in that mine. But the surveyors that came after you couldn’t find a trace of it. That was always your greatest flaw, Raven: You were too willing to bear the suffering of others.”

Raven’s off-hand clenched, then softened.   
She said, “That’s an interesting hypothesis. But maybe I just had bad guidance, Headmaster.”  
Ozpin walked to his desk and found his coffee mug. He sipped, and gestured to a vanity by the clockworks- though he knew she would decline. 

Addiction sated, he noted, “When you first abandoned your husband and daughter, you came to me for counsel. And you described to me the inner functions of the reactor. You detailed how it was that the faunus mechanics tricked the sensors so that the human operators would increase yield to dangerous levels. You said, ‘They just wanted to die and be done with it.’ But when did you study Dust reactors? Where did you learn anything of the conditions in the camp? You know things even the Schnees do not. And you weren’t even there. It all makes sense, however, if you inherited the knowledge of the people who were.”  
Raven didn’t answer.  
Ozpin checked the clockwork gears, reckoning the time. “And what was it that brought you to Vale tonight? Why choose now of all moments to kill Noir Soleil? Yes, I know about that. You were there just in time to rescue one of my students: Blake Belladonna. But what is her relation to you? I can see none. The one thing that has ever compelled you is motherly love, in a strange form. You went very far out of your way to save Yang in Mountain Glenn. And then you went very far out of your way for Blake Belladonna. It’s completely nonsensical… Unless you have inherited the camp’s affection for her.”  
Raven enunciated, “Affection? I don’t think you understand what you did to me, Ozpin.”  
“I offered you a choice, and you took it.”  
“I trusted you.”  
He leveled his tone and asserted, “What’s done is done, Raven.”  
She growled, “Release. Yang.”  
“I don’t have authority over the Atlessian military.”  
“No more lies, Ozpin. General James Ironwood answers to you.”  
“We cooperate, Raven.”  
“Then what did he give you in exchange for my daughter?”  
“His continued cooperation,” Ozpin grumbled.  
Raven walked to the window and pointed at Ironwood’s fleet. Their running lights merged with the skyscrapers in downtown, like an extension of the city’s nightlife.  
She asked, “Does he ever pay tribute for your cooperation?”  
Ozpin didn’t like her suggestion. He didn’t like that her fingers on the crystal cast the shadow of a spider.

He said, “I can promise you that he won’t take her back to Atlas.”  
Raven scoffed. “That means nothing. That fleet won’t escape the coming destruction. This city will burn, Ozpin. Salem’s Agent has come for the tower. I’ve seen her.”  
“Who?”  
Raven didn’t answer.   
Ozpin egged, “You mean the Woman in Red. You know who she is!” He set his mug on the glass table, loudly. “So tell us!”  
Raven was impossible to read through bone the mask. Her pupils never reacted. Her body language never changed. She was always serene or aggressive. Never anything else.   
But she communicated clearly when she said, “First… My Daughter.”  
“I can’t do that, Raven.”  
“Then I can’t help you, Headmaster.”  
“There are ten million people in Vale, Raven. If you don’t tell us who she is, they will all die.”  
“What a shame.”  
Ozpin forced a sigh. He’d always respected her appeals to reason. Perhaps it was time to invoke pathos.  
“I’m sorry, Raven. I know I never asked you what you felt about all this.”  
“I feel nothing.”  
“It can be lonely, I know. But if you-“  
“I. Feel. Nothing. You don’t understand, Ozpin. The moment I killed that girl, I lost every piece of me that I’d held sacred. A mother’s love? A lover’s caress? All sensuality in me is neutered.”  
She took a step and suddenly skipped to him, as if skipping frames in a film. She ripped off her gauntlet and pressed a bare hand to his cheek. He retracted from her skin, cold as a corpse. He didn’t understand. But he was starting to.  
He said, “Raven. Take off the mask.”  
“I can’t.”  
“I want to see your face, Raven.”  
“Then take it yourself.”  
She didn’t growl. She’d said it serenely. Ozpin didn’t know what to make of that. But she’d touched him gently. She wasn’t going to attack. So he slid his hands past her hears and gripped under the jawbone of her mask. Her eyes, crimson and still, flickered like the crystal, like a Grimm. And he understood. It wasn’t a mask. She’d grown these bones from her face. The bones were her age as a Grimm. The red spirals carved throughout were her experiences.

He released her. She gestured, and a hole in reality tore open behind her. The place beyond it was dark, yet flickering with motion. Ozpin recognized black magic. Raven took a step back, to leave through that dark place.  
She said, “If you don’t free Yang, I will. And I promise, I will make cooperation very difficult for you and Ironwood.”

Ozpin held up a hand. “Before you go, Raven, there’s a suspicion I’d like to address. A question that’s been repeated to you many times. Anyone can kill once without changing. But to have so many souls on your conscience… Sometimes we lose track of things. Some soldiers never really return from war. And if this really has made you into a monster… We all know that the Grimm have to kill to survive. I simply have to ask: Are you certain that you didn’t kill Summer?”  
Raven stopped her slow backpedal. She didn’t answer.  
Ozpin pressed, “It was a chaotic situation. I know enemies and friends can be confused when the whole world is falling upon you. I just want you to assure me.”  
Raven hissed, “I know that I’m sane, Ozpin. I’m very familiar with your mind games. And I know that you still have Amber locked up in your basement. So ask her.”  
“Her injuries prevent her from speaking.”  
“I know you, Old Man. Nothing will stop you from picking her brain.”  
Raven turned and left through the portal.


End file.
